It was an exciting day in Japan today for many game developers as Sony announced the winners of the 2004 10th annual game awards. For each fiscal year the Playstation awards celebrates the best selling games on the Sony console. This year had four platinum games (games that sold over a million copies) and eleven gold games (games that sold over 500,000 copies). Only fifteen games made it to become "best sellers". Of course all of these games will be added to the Playstation the best collection and the platinum games will be add to the mega hits collection.
Some games have all the luck in sales or they have a well known franchise to get a million copies sold in the blink of an eye. The four games that made it to the platinum level were Winning Eleven 7, Sengoku Musou (Samurai Warriors), Dragon Quest V and Minna No Golf 4 (Hot Shots Golf Fore!). Winning Eleven 7 International edition, Samurai Warriors and Hot Shots Golf Fore! were already released in America. Since Dragon Quest V did sell a million copies could that suggest that it will be released in America eventually? Knowing Square Enix it seems likely that after the high sales and the fact that they are pushing to make Dragon Warrior a bigger franchise in America it will be released in English. Although, it won’t be for a while. Square Enix has Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Full Metal Alchemist on the horizon.
Even though it is easier to sell 500,000 games compared to a whopping million, it is still quite an honor. Two of the games are Gundam games one is Kidou Senshi Gundam: Meguriai Sora (Mobile Suit Gundam: Encounters in Space) and Mobile Suit Gundam: AEUG vs. Titans. The anime game that sold well, actually sold better than the region it was designed for (i.e. North America) was Dragon Ball Z 2, better known as Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2. It racked up just over 500,000 sold copies. Sports games were also popular Derby Stallion ’04, Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 10, J League Professional Soccer and Winning Eleven 7 International Edition each sold very well. If you add up the copies of Winning Eleven 7 International and the original Winning Eleven 7 they sold over 2 million copies in Japan alone. This could make Winning Eleven 7 the best selling title of the fiscal year. Onimusha 3 is also part of the list, it may still make the platinum mark over the next few months, since it was only released back in February. The latest Taiko no Tatsjuin was also one of the best sellers, Namco pushed this version back making a package that included the drums. Namco was sure to increase the sales of the game with this idea. Shin Sangoku Musou Empires 3 (Dynasty Warriors 4 Xtreme Legends) was also part of the list, adding to the already million copies that Dynasty Warriors 4 sold. One surprising entrant was Gran Turismo 4 "Prologue". It sold about 750,000 copies! That may be the first demo disc that ever made it to gold status. Out of the gold sellers one is always named as the top gold seller. This year it was Konami’s baseball franchise, Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 10.
There were other top Playstation sellers this year like Biohazard Outbreak (Resident Evil Outbreak), Grand Theft Auto Vice City, Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando, Full Metal Alchemist, Puyo Pop Fever and Katamari Damacy. Xenosaga Episode 2 is also an honorable mention it only has 200,000 sold copies, but that was in a month period. Expect it to be a gold game next year. Two really close games to breaking the 500,000 mark were Super Robot Wars MX and SD Gundam Generation Seed. What do we expect to be on the list next year? Our predictions are as follows: Kingdom Hearts 2, Naruto: Narutimett Hero 2, Tales of Rebirth, Metal Gear Solid 3, Final Fantasy XII and Gran Turismo 4 to be on the list next year. We’re sure there will be some unannounced other non announced, non sequel or franchise games on the list next year too.
