Blue Dragon release boosts Xbox 360 sales in Japan

According to the latest sales figures from Media Create, the DS is still the best-selling console in Japan - but sales of Xbox 360 have seen a sharp rise following the release of platform exclusive Blue Dragon.

During the week ending December 10, just under 310,000 DS Lite units were sold, while the figure for the Nintendo Wii stood at 85,439 units. PlayStation 3 topped the 50,000 mark, bringing the total number of sales so far up to 238,000.

Microsoft sold 35,343 Xbox 360s - an increase of nearly 90 per cent over the previous week's figure of just over 4000 consoles. It's likely that the rise was linked to the release of Blue Dragon, which was developed by Mistwalker, the studio led by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. The game debuted in the all-formats software charts at number four.

In fifth place on the hardware chart is the PS2 (30,460 units), followed by the PSP (just under 29,000 units). Rounding off the top ten are the Game Boy Micro, GameCube, original DS, GBA and original Xbox, in that order.

Namco Bandai's Gundam SEED: Federation vs. ZAFT II went straight in at number one on the software chart, followed by another PS2 title, Yakuza 2.

Pokîmons Diamond and Pearl are in third and fifth place respectively, and DS games Kirby Squeak Squad, Jump Ultimate Stars and Common Knowledge Training are at numbers seven, nine and ten.

The remaining two places in the top ten went to Wii Sports at six and Wii Play at eight. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was down at number 17, possibly due to stock shortages.

The highest charting PlayStation 3 title was Ridge Racer 7 at number 38, followed by Gundam Target in Sight at 39 and Resistance: Fall of Man in 44th place.

Aside from Blue Dragon, one other Xbox 360 title made it into the top 100 - Dead or Alive X2, at number 82.