Tidbits From Famitsu’s Top 50 Sellers Of 2009

Enterbrain, the publisher behind Famitsu, recently published their top 50 game sales ranking chart for 2009 on the magazine’s website. Below is a partial chart with some games our readers might find interesting. The complete chart can be perused at the link above.

Keeping with the trend in recent years, Nintendo DS software occupied the most spots on the chart. Unsurprisingly, Dragon Quest IX took the top spot, with 4,100,968 units sold in just a few months. What is of more interest are the numbers for Wagamama Fashion Girls Mode (Style Savvy / Nintendo presents: Style Boutique in North America / Europe), which actually released in 2008 and continued to sell through 2009, albeit at a slower pace. Current numbers put it at just below 1 million, which, while less than what was probably expected of it internally, is enough to justify further development as a new IP.

Level-5’s Inazuma Eleven 2, too, was a breakout hit last year, outselling its predecessor by a wide margin. While the popularity of the manga and anime certainly seem to have helped awareness of the franchise, the fact that Level-5 opted for a simultaneous release of two separate SKUs with differences — like Pokémon — is very telling. It will be interesting to observe if other publishers decide to follow the same trend with portable franchises like Monster Hunter going forward.

The success of SD Gundam G Generation Wars on PS2 at 307,754 units is another point of interest that shows just how strongly fans tend to associate franchises with platforms. With sales of PSP software to rely on, and the relative ease of porting its games to the PS2, one wonders if Namco Bandai will experiment with multiplatform games the way Sony have with Motorstorm: Arctic Edge and wipEout: Pulse in the future.

Also, Final Fantasy XIII is now the highest-selling third-party game on a home console at 1,698,256 units, followed by Monster Hunter Tri at 968,033 units.