Japan Charts: Monster Hunter G hits the top spot for Capcom

A spate of new releases kept the Japanese software market healthy this week, with Capcom expansion title Monster Hunter G leading the pack with a 125,000 unit first weekend at retail, unusually strong for this time of year.

An update to the company's popular online title from 2004, PS2 exclusive Monster Hunter G has sold almost as many units in its first weekend as the original Monster Hunter did, suggesting that the titles are a major franchise in the making for Capcom.

In distant second place this week was Genki's PS2 samurai action game Fu-un Bakumatsu-den, which sold around 52,000 units - rather a lot less than its predecessor, Fu-un Shinsengumi, which managed 129,000 in the first week.

Two other new titles make it into the rankings, and they're both anime-based, with Konami's Magister Negi Magi in at number six, and Broccoli's Neon Genesis Evangelion: Iron Maiden 2nd at number ten, both on PS2.

Chart creators Media Create note that the former title sold through around 90 per cent of its initial shipment of 30,000 units, with many retailers running out of the game - commenting that this "showed how difficult it is to forecast demand," although even from this side of the world it didn't seem hard to guess that a game based on the latest series from Love Hina creator Ken Akamatsu, featuring an enormous cast of schoolgirl characters, might prove somewhat popular in the Japanese market.

Two DS titles retain their places in this week's ranking, with Wario Ware Touched at number four and Super Mario 64 DS at number seven, trailed by two PSP titles - Everybody's Golf (Hot Shots Golf) at number eight, and Dynasty Warriors at number nine.

In hardware terms, the PSP led the market once again this week, with almost 36 per cent market share compared to 24 per cent for the Nintendo DS, although once again it's worth noting that the platform is also still seeing strong initial demand due to limited supply, and continues to lag behind the DS in overall sales.

The PlayStation 2 continues to sell strongly as well, with 30 per cent market share, while the Game Boy Advance is down to seven per cent and the Cube has just three per cent of the market this week.

As a note to readers - Media Create stopped tracking sales of the PSone and the WonderSwan at the start of this year, as the launch of the new hardware platforms rendered their market share totally irrelevant. The remaining small-share platforms being tracked are the original Game Boy Advance, which had 0.18 per cent share this week (and whose figures we have been including with the GBA SP statistics in previous reports), and the Xbox, which had 0.27 per cent share this week.