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The week of October 11th – 17th saw the release of one Lord of Arcana, sales news of which some have been keenly anticipating. In its first three days on the Japanese market, Lord of Arcana sold close to 70,000 units.
Developed by Square Enix, Lord of Arcana is a cooperative multiplayer-focused PSP game, leading people to draw comparisons between it and Capcom’s popular Monster Hunter games. Ever since Monster Hunter’s success on the PSP, other Japanese publishers have been attempting to recreate it. Back in February, Namco Bandai released their own take on the PSP co-op genre with God Eater.
Monster Hunter is clearly the leader of the pack here, though, and has time and time again demonstrated its success not just as a game, but as a social phenomenon in Japan. The popular theory has been that with three other similar games (including SEGA’s Phantasy Star Portable series) attempting to crack the same audience, one of them was bound to not do as well, commercially.
It’s safe to assume at this point that Lord of Arcana is our unlucky candidate. When it released in February, God Eater sold sold an impressive 295,405 units. Phantasy Star Portable 2 debuted with an equally impressive 286,896 units. Both these make Lord of Arcana’s 70k figure look low in comparison.
One of the reasons for this could be that Square Enix have simply failed to effectively promote the title the way SEGA and Namco promoted their own. Phantasy Star Portable 2 was aggressively promoted with tie-ins involving popular food chains, anime series and Japanese magazines. PSP2 also had the benefit of being from a known franchise. Meanwhile, Namco pushed God Eater as a multiplayer game with a story, and their demo version offered a generous slice of the game’s strong points for players to sample.
Lord of Arcana differs from its competition in terms of the ingame experience, too. Instead of having you fight opponents in realtime like a regular action game, coming across an enemy in Lord of Arcana initiates a switch to a separate battle screen, similar to a turn-based RPG.
| Lw | Tw | Title | Tw. Sales | Tot. Sales | Sys. | Publisher |
| 01. | 01. | Pokémon Black / White | 168,541 | 4,161,397 | DS | Nintendo |
| New | 02. | Kirby’s Epic Yarn | 92,280 | New | Wii | Nintendo |
| New | 03. | Lord of Arcana | 69,932 | New | PSP | Square Enix |
| 03. | 04. | Kingdom Hearts re:Coded | 31,247 | 126,753 | DS | Square Enix |
| 04. | 05. | Red Dead Redemption | 26,293 | 96,892 | PS3 | Take Two |
| 06. | 06. | Wii Party | 23,304 | 1,122,732 | Wii | Nintendo |
| 02. | 07. | Macross Frontier: The False Diva (Hybrid Pack) | 18,071 | 170,769 | PS3 | Namco Bandai |
| 11. | 08. | Black Panther: New Yakuza Chapter | 11,263 | 247,748 | PSP | SEGA |
| 12. | 09. | Class of Heroes 3 | 9,848 | 40,420 | PSP | Acquire |
| 05. | 10. | Dead Rising 2 | 21,454 | 9,761 | PS3 | Capcom |
| 10. | 11. | K-On! After School Live | 9,745 | 202,048 | PSP | SEGA |
| 08. | 12. | F1 2010 | 8,680 | 33,953 | PS3 | Codemasters |
| 14. | 13. | The Legend of Heroes: Zero no Kiseki | 8,293 | 103,799 | PSP | Falcom |
| 22. | 14. | One Piece: Gigant Battle | 8,150 | 194,869 | DS | Namco Bandai |
| 20. | 15. | Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (PSP The Best) | 6,529 | 449,895 | PSP | Capcom |
| 17. | 16. | Super Mario Galaxy 2 | 6,270 | 855,836 | Wii | Nintendo |
| 07. | 17. | Red Dead Redemption | 6,203 | 31,877 | 360 | Take Two |
| 21. | 18. | Wii Fit Plus | 5,990 | 2,092,697 | Wii | Nintendo |
| New | 19. | NBA 2K11 | 5,167 | New | PS3 | Take Two |
| 26. | 20. | Mario Kart Wii | 5,023 | 2,952,634 | Wii | Nintendo |
Sales data sourced from 4Gamer and Media-Create.
