Top-Selling Japanese Games In 2003 Reveal Trends

Thanks to The Magic Box for their chart showing the top-selling videogames in Japan during 2003. Square Enix's Final Fantasy X-2 for PS2 tops the chart, selling a little less than 2 million copies, despite Japanese consumer discontent with the title, and Nintendo's Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire for GBA places second, with almost 1.5 million copies sold in 2003, and nearly 5 million in total. A surprise hit in third place is the PlayStation 2 action title Dynasty Warriors 4 from Koei, and further down the chart, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for GameCube can only manage a disappointing 26th place, with 310,000 copies sold, and an Xbox title of any kind is, sadly, nowhere to be seen in the Top 30.

Comments

Re:No Grand Theft Auto?

[bugbread]

Because it's a top 30 list, and GTA hasn't sold enough copies to make it into the top 30. It would have to have sold more than 265,083 copies to beat Kirby's Air Raid and make it into the top 30.

Lucky ducks!

[llamaluvr]

They got another Dragon Quest (Warrior) Monsters Game? Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart for the GBA was 7th place. Does anybody know if that's just another name for one we have over here or an entirely different game? I've actually never played one, but I've recently become enamored with the Dragon Warrior series, having played the rereleass of 2 and 3 on the GBC, and DW7 on Playstation.

At any rate, it's a little OT, but, do any other single-player RPG fans out there besides me find the Dragon Warrior games to be a whole lot more satisfying than the Final Fantasy series? Sure, the graphics on DW7 are pretty subpar for the Playstation, but the games seem to be a whole lot more challenging, with less cheesy diolouge, cooler spells and attacks, dungeons with more than one direction to go in, and things like that.

They get plenty of respect in Japan, as Dragon Quest 7 was the greatest selling playstation game ever over there, or something like that. But they really don't get props over in the States. Nobody payed much attention to the GBC rereleases of of Dragon Warrior 1, 2, and 3, even though they were marvelous remakes, and it's been near impossible to find DW7 in a store for a long time now. [sigh]