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• Japan Gaga for God Eater

  　　When we say Japan loves itself some Monster Hunter, what we really mean is that Japan loves four player local play mission-based games, often where you hunt (or, perhaps, kill) creatures (or, if you will, monsters).

  　　Substitute "Eat" for "Hunt" and "God" for "Monsters," and you seem to do just as well, as evidenced by God Eater's first week performance. Namco Bandai's multiplayer Monster Hunter clone sold 295,000 units in its first week, easily topping the charts. The game's success actually doesn't come as a surprise, considering a demo version was downloaded over 1.5 million times.

  　　God Eater was followed by mostly older titles. PS3's Star Ocean 4 was the exception, placing third with 72,000 units. The Xbox 360 version sold 162,000 in its first week in February last year, so it's hard to describe this as a success.

  　　Here's the full chart for February 1 through February 7.

  　　1. God Eater (Namco Bandai, PSP): 295,000

  　　2. Dragon Quest VI (Square Enix, DS): 190,000 (1,096,000)

  　　3. Star Ocean 4 (Square Enix, PS3): 72,000

  　　4. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo, Wii): 62,000 (3,263,000)

  　　5. Friend Collection (Nintendo, DS): 38,000 (2,780,000)

  　　6. Wii Fit Plus (Nintendo, Wii): 27,000 (1,610,000)

  　　7. Resonance of Fate (Sega, PS3): 25,000 (143,000)

  　　8. Pop 'n Music Portable (Konami, PSP): 19,000

  　　9. Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep (Square Enix, PSP): 15,000 (728,000)

  　　10. Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo, Wii): 13,000 (1,735,000)

  　　In the hardware race, PSP continued to dominate, only unlike last week God Eater provides a pretty clear reason for the system's strong performance.

  　　PSP: 43,163

  　　Wii: 36,149

  　　DSi LL: 28,080

  　　PS3: 25,450

  　　DSi: 19,116

  　　DS Lite: 5,410

  　　Xbox 360: 3,651

  　　PS2: 2,047

  　　PSP go: 1,738