Like every Monday the major Japanese retail and rental chain Tsutaya released its weekly sales charts, that are usually considered a nice glimpse on what the Media Create charts will look like on Wednesday, since Tsutaya has a very large number of stores scattered across the whole country.
And this time around, there's a surprise, with a western game breaking the Pokémon domination.
You can check out the chart below, with new titles bolded.
- Battlefield 4 - PS3
- Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2013 - PS3
- Pokémon X – 3DS
- Monster Hunter 4 – 3DS
- Grand Theft Auto V – PS3
- Akiba's Trip 2 - PS Vita
- Pokemon Y - 3DS
- Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2013 - PSP
- Akiba's Trip 2 - PS3
- Gundam Breaker - PS Vita
- Namco Bandai Games Presents: J Legend Retsuden - 3DS
- Oneechanbara Z Kagura with Nonono - PS3
- Wii Party U - Wii U
- Metal Max 4: Moonlight Diva - 3DS
- Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2013 - PS Vita
- Danball Senki Wars - 3DS
- Exstetra - PS Vita
- NBA 2K14 - PS3
- Sentocho Densetsu No Shinobi to Survival Battle -3DS
- BlazBlue: Chronophantasma – PS3
Apparently Battlefield 4, strongly advertised in Japan and part of a fairly popular franchise in the archipelago of the rising sun despite being made in the west, managed to break the Pokémon domination. Of course we'll have to wait for Wednesday and the Media Create software charts for a confirmation, as Tsutaya lists Pokémon X and Y separately, but X ranked only 3rd Y is far enough down in the charts for a very real possibility of a dethroning to exist.
It's also interesting to see that Akiba's Trip 2 sold more on PS Vita than on PS3, which is starting to be a common trend for first week sales of many games. Oneechanbara didn't exactly debut with a big spash, but after all it's mostly a remake, and a niche one to begin with, while unfortunately Exstetra seems to have started quite slow, landing on 17th place for the PS Vita, while the 3DS version is nowhere to be seen.
It's a pity, considering that the game looks promising, but FuRyu is a small company, and its marketing power isn't exactly immense.