Katamari rolls up half a million sales in Japan

TOKYO--Namco today announced that its Katamari Damacy series has shipped 500,000 units in Japan as of January 16. The series started in March 2004 with the original Katamari Damacy on PlayStation 2, and has since spawned a sequel as well as a PSP edition of the franchise.

Much like the behemoth conglomerations of junk players construct in the game, the original Katamari Damacy started off as a much more modest creature, selling an unimpressive 30,000 in its first few weeks of Japanese release. But while games in Japan typically get a substantial portion of their overall sales in the first few weeks of release, Katamari Damacy sales kept rolling. The game continued to receive about the same volume of orders from retailers each week, managing to move more than 100,000 copies two months later.

The steady sales prompted Namco to make a sequel, and the company released Minna Daisuki Katamari Damacy (We Love Katamari) a year later in July 2005. Boku no Watashi no Katamari Damacy (Me and My Katamari) came out for Sony's PSP in Japan just before Christmas, and it's slated for an American release in March.