Kingdom Hearts II hits 1m sales mark

Square Enix and Buena Vista Games are celebrating the early success of Disney themed RPG Kingdom Hearts II, which has sold over a million copies just four weeks after its North American release.

Merging of Square Enix' hugely popular RPG titles - including characters from the Final Fantasy series - and a collection of Walt Disney's most famous cartoon characters, the PlayStation 2 exclusive is the sequel to Kingdom Hearts, which is one of the top ten best selling titles in North America (according to data from the NPD Group).

The title was released in the US on March 28th, and has achieved significant critical acclaim and an overwhelmingly positive response from consumers across North America.

Daishiro Okada, Square Enix president and COO, commented: "Kingdom Hearts II has sold through one million units in just one-third the time of that of the original, proving that fans were waiting to get their hands on the sequel. The winning combination of Disney and Square Enix has done it again and we couldn't be happier with the results."

Since its debut late in 2002, the original Kingdom Hearts title has shipped more than 2.6 million units in North America alone. Combined with the 2004 release of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories on the Nintendo GameBoy Advance and the Japanese launch of Kingdom Hearts II in December, the series has shipped a total of more than 8.5 million units worldwide to date.

"Kingdom Hearts II is the result of great creative teams coming together to make one of the most successful console games of the year," added Graham Hopper, SVP and general manager, Buena Vista Games. "The success of this game is very exciting and we look forward to our continued collaboration with the team at Square Enix."

The game features a voice cast led by Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense), and includes Christopher Lee and James Woods amongst many others. Players lead the main character Sora, together with Disney's Donald and Goofy, through a fantasy land themed around multiple Disney films, including Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Mulan, Pirates of the Caribbean, Steamboat Willie and Tron.

In addition, the game features over 100 Disney characters and players will also get to revisit themed worlds from the original title, such as Aladdin, Disney Castle, Hercules, The Little Mermaid, Winnie the Pooh and Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Kingdom Hearts II is currently available in Japan and North America. The company has yet to confirm a release date for UK and Europe, although judging by the success of the game stateside, we should expect an EU release announcement shortly.