Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch has ventured to the top of the UK sales charts, conjuring itself into first position for the week. The striking Level-5 and Studio Ghibli collaboration wrapped its wand around the back of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2’s head, pushing the popular first-person shooter into third position. Last week’s only other new entry, the Hitman HD Trilogy, snuck into fifth, leaving a pile of dead bodies in its wake.
According to Lee Kirton, Namco Bandai’s UK PR gaffer, Ni No Kuni actually sold out in many stores across the UK. "We have more stock going into the channel this week so check with local stores to receive your copy," he told Eurogamer.net. "We hope the word of mouth and demand for the title continues as it does prove that JRPGs are special and we invest a lot of time and effort within this genre."
The remainder of the chart played host to the usual array of highfliers, including FIFA 13, Far Cry 3, and Need for Speed Most Wanted. You can peruse the full list of movers and shakers through here. Let us know if you picked up any new games over the last seven days in the comments section below.
[source chart-track.co.uk, via eurogamer.net]
Comments 9
And well deserved, says I. Superb game, and I'm having great fun with it.
@KenB I really want to play it, but I'm a bit put off by the length. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I really don't have time for a 40 hour epic these days.
Jrpg will still be one of the top. I don't understand why still hesitant to make them come more like in psone era
I really wanted to love this game. Played the demo. It's lovely looking, but 'just another' RPG in gameplay, and I'm just not all that in to them. I image if you're in to your RPGs and love a bit of Ghibli, it really is excellent- again all the praise I can really give is that it's nice to look at.
This is brilliant news for Japanese games in general. It goes to prove how stupid some Japanese developers have been this generation in trying to make their games more western orientated. It was never needed - people liked JRPGs because they were typically Japanese, that never had to change.
@ShogunRok
You can't really blame developers for wanting to jump on the bandwagon. You just need to look at the sales figures for awful Call of Duty games. If they want to make money it's understandable that they would want to emulate these "western orientated" games to make the most of the market. Blame dumb gamers.
@Snorky While it's clear many Japanese publishers have tried to jump on the success of franchises like Call of Duty, it certainly hasn't worked to any degree. That's the fault of misguided publishers who think they know what gamers want - most of them don't have a clue. Square Enix is a prime example of this. If gamers are so dumb, Ni No Kuni wouldn't have gotten to number 1. There's still a huge and profitable market for Japanese games.
The overall lack of quality has played a large part in the decline of the JRPG, too. It's a viscous cycle for Japanese developers, and they've hopefully learned from their mistakes, and refrain from repeating them next gen,
Great News. I was planning to play this together with my daughter, but after playing the demo it looks too hard/involved for her. Maybe when she is a bit older. Have to finish Papo and Yo first anyway. I guess it doesn't stop me playing it for me.
Good, I've never been a huge fan of JRPGs but I like to see a well crafted game get to the top. I also like that this is a game from a Japanese developer that didn't run from making it a very Japanese game. They put it out there, believed its quality would win people over and got rewarded. Hopefully more Japanese developers follow suit. They don't need to change their design philosophies to appeal to Western gamers, just put out a good freakin' game. Nobody asked for Final Fantasy or Resident Evil or Silent Hill to become high-octane action games, hopefully these idiot companies realize that and have a change in thinking going forward. The sooner these fools realize the CoD crowd doesn't care about anything but CoD, the better.
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