3rd Birthday Debuts in Sixth Place During Busy Christmas Week

Two high-profile PSP games made their debut during Christmas week in Japan but only one of them could come out on top. Of course, in the land whereMonster Hunter Portable 3rdstill rules,"on top"is second place in this week's Media Create sales figures (viaInside Games).

The victor was AKB 1/48, a dating game that features members of the J-pop supergroup AKB 48 (so named because there are 48 young women in the group). The game launched with four different retail SKUs, some including a special pink PSP, others just pink battery cases featuring kiss marks. All combined, these different versions sold 236,000 copies whileThe 3rd Birthday, the anticipated sequel to the Parasite Eve games, sold 140,000 copies and ended up in sixth place.

Two other debuts of note were Cyber Troopers Virtual-On Force, an Xbox 360 port of a popular mech arcade game from 2001, andEchochrome ii, the Move-based puzzle game for PS3. Virtual-On ended up in 29th place and Echochrome fell somewhere out of the top 30.

This week's Media Create hardware data comes fromNeoGAFand it shows another increase across the board for all consoles. Individually the PSP remained at the top, but when all models are combined the DS actually sold a few more units. The Wii remained the number one home console by a wide margin.

The full Top 10 software chart (new releases inbold):

1. Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (PSP) - 404,000
2. AKB 1/48 Idol to itoshitara... (PSP)- 236,000
3. Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii) - 214,000
4. Pokemon Black/Pokemon White (DS) - 165,000
5. Wii Party (Wii) - 162,000
6. The 3rd Birthday (PSP)- 140,000
7. Mario Sports Mix (Wii) - 136,000
8. Inazuma Eleven 3: The Ogre (DS) - 117,000
9. Ni no Kuni (DS) - 84,000
10. Tongari boushi to maho no omise (DS) - 74,000

And the hardware sales:

Home Consoles:

• Wii: 131,761
• PS3: 64,228
• 360: 5,298
• PS2: 2,604

Handhelds:

• PSP: 177,691
• DSi: 93,464
• DSi LL: 92,329
• DS Lite: 5,790
• PSP Go: 5,380

Source