Sony honors Japanese top sellers

Final Fantasy XII led Sony Computer Entertainment Japan's list of winners at this year's PlayStation Awards. The July 25 awards show recognized PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable titles that have become best sellers, based on sales data gathered through April 30.

This year's awards placed the titles into three categories: double platinum, for games that have sold between 2 million and 3 million copies; platinum, for 1 million to 2 million; and gold, for 500,000 to 1 million.

Square Enix's Final Fantasy XII--set for an October 31 release in the US--took home the only double-platinum award, despite being one of the most recently released games on the list. A dozen other games--11 PlayStation 2 titles and one on the PSP--scored appearances in the other two categories.

In the platinum category, the two latest Winning Eleven titles were honored, along with Square Enix's Disney-themed role-playing game Kingdom Hearts II. Among the gold-category honorees were Resident Evil 4, Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 12, Dirge of Cerebus: Final Fantasy VII, and five other titles, including the lone PSP game, Monster Hunter Freedom.

A complete list of this year's winners--with their platforms, publishers, and Japanese release dates--is below:

Double Platinum
--Final Fantasy XII (PS2, Square Enix, March 16, 2006)

Platinum
--World Soccer Winning Eleven 9 (PS2, Konami, August 4, 2005)
--Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer 2007 (PS2, Konami, April 27, 2006)
--Kingdom Hearts II (PS2, Square Enix, December 22, 2005)

Gold
--Resident Evil 4 (PS2, Capcom, December 1, 2005)
--Monster Hunter Freedom (PSP, Capcom, December 1, 2005)
--Monster Hunter 2 (PS2, Capcom, February 16, 2006)
--Samurai Warriors 2 (PS2, Koei, February 24, 2006)
--Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu 12 (PS2, Konami, July 14, 2005)
--Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII (PS2, Square Enix, January 26, 2006)
--Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi (PS2, Bandai Namco, October 6, 2005)
--Tales of the Abyss (PS2, Bandai Namco, December 15, 2005)
--Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 (PS2, Banpresto, July 28, 2005)