The Game Year in review in Japan

[Razer]

from www.the-magicbox.com

"Here are the 2006 Top 10 videogame news in Japan.

1. Nintendo DS became the fastest selling videogame system in Japan; sales of DS exploded after the launch of Nintendo DS Lite; major game developers turning their focuses on the DS platform; DS overtook PS2 as the mainstream platform.
2. The launch of PlayStation 3 in Japan, severe shortage and high price made it the least successful hardware launch from Sony
3. The launch of Wii in Japan was a great success, the console is leading sales in the 3 next-gen consoles in Japan
4. Square Enix announced Dragon Quest IX for Nintendo DS, the first time a new DQ game lands on a portable system; and for the first time the game is completely changed from a turn based RPG into a multiplayer action RPG, many fans questioned "is this really Dragon Quest?"
5. Brain Training games become one of the most popular genre in Japan, Nintendo's two DS Brain Training games sold over 7 million copies in Japan, and spawned dozens of clones
6. Hironobu Sakaguchi, the father of Final Fantasy, teamed up with Akira Toriyama to release the dream RPG Blue Dragon for Xbox 360. This is the duo's new work since Chrono Trigger for Super Famicom.
7. Motion sensing technology in Nintendo's Wii captured hearts of game players, players switching focus on Wii after seeing the demos from E3
8. Sony added six axis motion sensing technology in PlayStation 3 controller, but it has often been criticized and compared with Wii's motion sensing technology
9. The release of Final Fantasy XII for PlayStation 2, the game sold over 2.3 million copies in Japan.
10. Downloadable games became a new trend in next generation consoles, such as Virtual Console games for Wii, Xbox Live Arcade for Xbox 360 and e-Distribution games for PS3"

Let's see what the top US stories were.