Ben-DutkaWe're approaching the end of the year, and that can only mean one thing: award time.
But this particular set of awards deals almost exclusively with sales; we say "almost" because this year, there was a new fan favorite category at the annual PlayStation Awards in Japan. It's an event where Sony honors the best-selling PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, and PlayStation Network titles released between November 1, 2009 and October 31, 2010 in the Land of the Rising Sun. This year, only one game was worthy of the top-tier Platinum Award, which honors any game that can sell over 1 million copies in Japan. And that game was Square-Enix's Final Fantasy XIII , which has also sold over 5.5 million copies worldwide. The interesting part is that FFXIII qualified for this award with 24 hours of release…yeah, the Japanese still love FF.
As for Gold Awards, which are given to products that sell more than 500,000 units: Yakuza 4 and Fist of the North Star Warriors for the PS3 and Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G , God Eater , Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker , Phantasy Star Portable 2 , Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and Monster Hunter Diary for the PSP. In regards to the User Choice Awards, we find popular titles like God of War III , Final Fantasy XIII (yes, again), Peace Walker , Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition and, perhaps surprisingly, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 . This implies we'll see Black Ops on the User Choice award list next year and that isn't what's normally expected from Japan. But hey, the entire world is changing; not just the west.
Related Game(s): Final Fantasy XIII
