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If there’s one thing the week of January 31st – February 6th demonstrates, it’s the power of a brand and marketing, with Ace Attorney Investigations 2 topping the sales chart for the week at 132,000 units.
Ace Attorney Investigations:
For the sake of comparison, Capcom’s previous DS adventure game, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, debuted at a mere 24,000 units. The original Ace Attorney Investigations, however, sold a whopping 172,000 units in its first week.
In a recent Capcom media strategy report, the company revealed that it has been aggressively promoting the Ace Attorney franchise through various events in Japan, such as live plays, which have been attracting a broader, non-traditional audience (including women) to it.
As a result, sales of the original Ace Attorney Investigations were higher than expected, and character-based merchandise has been performing favourably as well. While Ace Attorney Investigations 2 debuted at lower figures than its predecessor, Capcom have recently stated that they plan to continue promoting the brand in the future as a mid-range franchise, along with Sengoku Basara.
Everything else:
Meanwhile, The Last Story dropped precipitously from #1 last week, all the way down to #7 this week, with a fraction of its first week sales. The same could be said for Valkyria Chronicles 3, down to #8 and facing more than its share of competition from other PSP games (six in the top-ten alone). Of all the games released last week, Kenka Bancho 5 appears to have had the best staying power, only dropping from #4 to #5.
The number of PSP games on the chart (twelve in total) is pretty astounding. As DS releases slow down and publishers move to the other viable portable platform, we’re seeing publishers like Namco Bandai put one PSP game out after another.
The top-20 sales chart for the week was as follows:
| Lw | Tw | Title | Weekly Sales | Total Sales | Sys. | Publisher |
| New | 01. | Ace Attorney Investigations 2 | 132,266 | New | DS | Capcom |
| New | 02. | Macross Triangle Frontier | 55,513 | New | PSP | Namco Bandai |
| New | 03. | White Knight Chronicles Episode.Portable: Dogma Wars | 40,603 | New | PSP | Sony |
| New | 04. | Dragon Ball Kai: Ultimate Butouden | 31,108 | New | PSP | Namco Bandai |
| 04. | 05. | Kenka Bancho 5 | 28,000 | 86,978 | PSP | Spike |
| 07. | 06. | Monster Hunter Portable 3rd | 27,861 | 4,156,138 | PSP | Capcom |
| 01. | 07. | The Last Story | 19,178 | 133,900 | Wii | Nintendo |
| 02. | 08. | Valkyria Chronicles 3 | 17,927 | 120,705 | PSP | Sega |
| 10. | 09. | Donkey Kong Country Returns | 16,493 | 790,386 | Wii | Nintendo |
| 03. | 10. | My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute Portable | 11,721 | 100,214 | PSP | Namco Bandai |
| 16. | 11. | Pokémon Black/White | 10,795 | 5,061,434 | DS | Nintendo |
| 06. | 12. | Dragon Age: Origins | 10,517 | 53,371 | PS3 | Spike |
| 14. | 13. | Wii Party | 9,678 | 1,777,102 | Wii | Nintendo |
| 21. | 14. | Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 | 9,301 | 162,901 | PSP | Konami |
| 05. | 15. | A Certain Magical Index | 8,863 | 64,880 | PSP | ASCII Media Works |
| 08. | 16. | Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep Final Mix | 8,430 | 106,276 | PSP | Square Enix |
| 22. | 17. | Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 | 8,229 | 435,122 | PS3 | Konami |
| 18. | 18. | Ni no Kuni: The Jet-Black Sorcerer | 7,595 | 467,561 | DS | Level 5 |
| 17. | 19. | Inazuma Eleven 3: Challenge the World – The Ogre | 7,165 | 395,515 | DS | Level 5 |
| New | 20. | Atelier Violet: The Alchemist of Grammnad 2 | 5,564 | New | PSP | Gust |
Sales data acquired from 4Gamer and Media-Create, with additional sales insights gathered from Geimin.net.
