Rhythm Heaven takes number one in Japan

3DS boosted back to the top of the hardware chart on the back of two new software releases

News by Matthew Handrahan Editor-in-Chief

Published on June 18, 2015

Rhythm Heaven: The Best+ entered the Japanese software chart at number one last week, boosting the 3DS back to the top of the hardware chart in the process.

The latest game in Nintendo's seven year-old franchise sold 157,000 units, comfortably more than Bandai Namco's Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden, which finished the week in second place with 74,000 sales.

Both Rhythm Heaven and Dragon Ball were 3DS releases, and Nintendo's handheld certainly benefited from the influx of new software. Indeed, it sold 19,000 units, almost double its sales from the previous week, replacing the Wii U as Japan's most popular hardware as a result.

The Creative Assembly's Alien: Isolation was launched on the PlayStation 4 last week, ultimately charting at number 8. The most remarkable aspect of that, however, is that it now only takes 6,000 units to be a top ten console game in Japan.

The software top ten is below, with lifetime sales in parentheses.

1.[3DS] Rhythm Heaven: The Best+ (Nintendo, 06/11/15) - 157,591 (New)
2.[3DS] Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden (Bandai Namco, 06/11/15) - 74,660 (New)
3.[Wii U] Splatoon (Nintendo, 05/28/15) - 53,198 (266,929)
4.[PSV] The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Evolution (Falcom, 06/11/15) - 20,484 (New)
5.[Wii U] Mario Kart 8 (Nintendo, 05/29/14) - 9,661 (1,029,263)
6.[PSV] Minecraft: PlayStation Vita Edition (SCE, 03/19/15) - 9,657 (199,989)
7.[PS4] The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Spike Chunsoft, 05/21/15) - 8,723 (111,834)
8.[PS4] Alien: Isolation (Sega, 06/11/15) - 6,227 (New)
9.[PSV] Shiren the Wanderer 5 Plus (Spike Chunsoft, 06/04/15) - 6,070 (22,295)
10.[3DS] Girls Mode 3: Kira Kira Code (Nintendo, 04/16/15) - 4,891 (151,194)

The hardware chart is below, with the previous week's sales in parentheses.