This Week In Sales: Dark Souls Sees Demon Sales, Ninjas Infiltrate 3DS

Period: The week of Sep 19th – Sep 25th (2011)

Top-seller: Dark Souls – 279,567

Nintendo 3DS sales: 70,159 | Total sales: 1,905,601

Following the very slow week after TGS, last week was packed with new releases in Japan. Leading the way was Dark Souls, which sold 279,567 in its first week on the market and easily grabbed the #1 spot on the software sales chart for the week.

From Software must be grinning from ear to ear. Dark Souls’ first week sales are far, far ahead of those of Demon’s Souls, which only managed to sell close to 40,000 units in its first week. Congratulations, From Software.

Following at #2 was the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus Collection Limited Box. That sold close to 92,000 units, although both games also charted as regular standalone releases in the top-20, further down the sales chart.

At #4 was — surprise! — Gears of War 3. Here’s a quick look at how all the Gears of War games released so far have performed in their first week:

Gears of War – 33,212

Gears of War 2 – 48,656

Gears of War 3 – 56,113

Finally, at #6 was Senran Kagura: Portrait of Girls, which performed rather well, too, all things considered. Senran Kagura sold 52,000 copies in its first week, and Nintendo 3DS hardware sales for the week saw yet another increase. For now, we’re going to chalk that trend up to a combination of boobs and anticipation for upcoming software such as Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7 and Monster Hunter 3G.

The complete top-20 software sales chart for the week is as follows:

Sales data acquired from 4Gamer, Media-Create and Geimin.net.