Japanese

This week saw a massive sell-through of the second most popular monster fighting game in Japan (after Pokemon) with Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G taking last week's top spot.

This shows that the defection of Monster Hunter 3 (currently in production) from PlayStation 3 to Wii, could turn out to be an important strategic move for Nintendo.

This week also saw Brawl finally hit the 1.5 million sales that North America managed in a fraction of the time. Charts and more after the break...

Famitsu publisher Enterbrain has released its latest data, a 2007 hardware and software sales round-up. According to Enterbrain's sales data and estimation, the domestic Japan market was worth ¥687.66 billion (US$6 billion). That 25 percent increase is an a record high for the domestic market. Here's the breakdown for those who are into numbers and money:

Total Sales by Year:

• 2006 (December 26, 2005 ~ December 31, 2006)
  Hardware: Approximately 261.9 billion yen
  Software: Approx. 363.89 billion yen
  Total: Approx. 625.79 billion yen
• 2007 (January 1, 2007 ~ December 30, 2007)
  Hardware: Approximately 327.41 billion yen
  Software: Approx. 360.25 billion yen
  Total: Approx. 687.66 billion yen

The breakdown of individual hardware and software top spots after the Jump..