This Week In Sales: Ni no Kuni Reaches Our World, Nintendo Games See Holiday Bump

You’ll find several points of interest on the sales chart for the week of December 6th – 12th. Since there’s so much to talk about, let’s do this bullet point-style, so it’s easier to read:

• • Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, still at the #1 spot at around 2.6 million, is about 1 million units away from Capcom’s 3.6 million expectations.

• • Monster Hunter Freedom Unite shipped 2.5 milliion copies in half a year. Portable 3rd has sold over that number in just two weeks.

Combined with sales of its “PSP the Best” budget re-release, Freedom Unite shipped 3 million units. Portable 3rd’s lifetime sales alone are expected to outdo that figure.

• Ni no Kuni released during the week. Level 5 shipped 600,000 copies of the game. So far, it’s only sold through 170,548 of those. Given the game’s potentially mainstream appeal on account of Studio Ghibli’s involvement, we’ll have to see if word-of-mouth sustains the game’s sales in the coming weeks.

• Gran Turismo 5 dropped precipitously from #5 to #18 on the charts, and currently sits at 510,319 units.

• A number of Nintendo games actually saw a significant increase in sales over last week, owing to the effect the holidays traditionally have on Nintendo products. You can compare with last week’s chart if you like.

• Likewise, seeing games like Mario Vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-land Mayhem, Super Fossil Fighters, Donkey Kong Country Returns and Mario Sports Mix breeze into the hundred thousands is rather impressive.

• Konami’s Magician’s Quest: The Merchant’s Store of Sorcery, which is still hanging onto the charts, sold another 27,443 units during the week.

• Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood also released during the week, and debuted at 36,098 units, while Shiren 5 debuted at 25,192 units.

The top-20 chart for the week of December 6th – 12th was as follows:

Sales data sourced from 4Gamer and Media-Create.