MGS4 boosts PS3 sales in Japan

It wasn't quite a million sold on day one, but Konami must still be quite pleased with last week's sales figures in Japan for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

After going on sale in the country on June 12, the game debuted at the top of the software charts for the week of June 9-15. So far, 464,926 copies of MGS4 have been sold, which means that it's almost halfway to Konami's milestone.

Hideo Kojima's PlayStation 3 exclusive also boosted sales of the console itself. They were up from 10,856 the week before by almost seven times to 75,311.

Two special editions of Guns of the Patriots were released in Japan: the MGS4 Premium Pack, and the PS3 MGS4 Welcome Box. The Premium Pack includes the "very" limited-edition gunmetal PS3 along with the game, and retails at ¥51,800 ($481). The PS3 MGS4 Welcome Box is simply the game plus a Dual Shock controller in ceramic white, black, or satin silver and retails at ¥63,800 ($593).

The second-best-selling console of the week ending June 15 was the PlayStation Portable, still buoyed by Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G sales (released on March 27, and currently number five in the chart), which clocked in 64,675 units. The Wii was next with 45,564, followed by the DS Lite with 39,201, the PlayStation 2 with 7,297, and the Xbox 360 with 2,163.