LA Noire tops Japanese chart

By Fred Dutton Published 13 July, 2011

inFamous 2 also makes strong debut.

It's been a good week for Western developers on the notoriously parochial Japanese software chart, with LA Noire and inFamous 2 taking the top two spots.

As detailed by Andriasang, the PlayStation 3 version of Rockstar's detective epic was number one, selling 58,436 in its first week, while Sucker Punch's inFamous 2 sold 33,474 in second.

Bug-blasting sequel Earth Defense Force Insect Armageddon followed in third and fourth on PS3 and Xbox 360 respectively.

Here's the full top 20:

  1. L.A. Noire (Rockstar Games, PS3): 58,436 NEW!
  2. inFamous 2 (SCEJ, PS3): 33,474 NEW!
  3. Earth Defense Force Insect Armageddon (D3 Publisher, PS3): 30,189 NEW!
  4. Earth Defense Force Insect Armageddon (D3 Publisher, Xbox 360): 17,817 NEW!
  5. Wiimote Plus Variety Pack (Nintendo, Wii): 17,008 NEW!
  6. Little Battle eXperience (Level 5, PSP): 15,807 (Life to date: 244,790)
  7. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (Nintendo, 3DS): 14,985 (240,738)
  8. Steins; Gate (5pb., PSP): 13,700 (99,088)
  9. 007 Goldeneye (Nintendo, Wii): 13,216 (49,390)
  10. Wii Sports Resort (Wii Remote Plus Pack) (Nintendo, Wii): 12,877 (388,074)
  11. L.A. Noire (Rockstar Games, Xbox 360): 12,621 NEW!
  12. Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition (Capcom, PS3): 10,512 (65,436)
  13. Atelier Meruru: Alchemist of Arland 3 (Gust, PS3): 10,421 (116,762)
  14. Tales of the Abyss (Namco Bandai, 3DS): 10,034 (84,207)
  15. To Heart 2 Dungeon Travelers (AquaPlus, PSP): 9,321 (46,717)
  16. Class of Heroes 3D (Acquire, 3DS): 8,353 NEW!
  17. Pokemon Black & White (Nintendo, DS): 8,271 (5,227,336)
  18. Gundam Memories: Memories of the Battle (Namco Bandai, PSP): 6,559 (72,327)
  19. Yakuza Of The End (Sega, PS3): 6,297 (394,902)
  20. Haruhi Suzumiya's Mahjong (Kadokawa Shoten, PSP): 5,285 NEW!

The PSP returned to the top of the hardware chart after a couple of weeks playing second fiddle to the 3DS.

Sony's handheld sold 26,373, down from 29,871 last week, while the 3DS shifted 22,943, down from 30,233. The PS3 followed in third and the Wii in fourth.

  1. PSP: 26,373 (Last week: 29,871)
  2. 3DS: 22,943 (30,233)
  3. PS3: 22,900 (26,441)
  4. Wii: 13,068 (12,423)
  5. DSi LL: 4811 (4963)
  6. DSi: 4725 (4504)
  7. X360: 2016 (2244)
  8. PS2: 1309 (1222)
  9. DS Lite: 56 (138)
  10. PSP go: 34 (7)
Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (17) Latest comment 11 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • CaptainQuint #1 11 months ago

    Well, the Japs are known for their love of gimmicky games.

  • Centrifugal #2 11 months ago

    I'm a bit disappointed with L.A Noire. No, I wasn't expecting it to be GTA 1940 or anything like that. I play a lot of 'point-and-clicks' like Ace Attorney, Hotel Dusk and others on my DS, so I don't mind the slow paced nature of the game.

    I actually think it's far too fast. Having so many cases that are so short means that you never truly get invested into the story because things are over just when they get interesting.

    I think they should have gone down the route of Ace Attorney; have four, maybe five cases that last hours and have plenty of variation and twists whilst maintaining a gripping plot throughout each of them, and make them all interconnected by an underlying theme or plot element.

    L.A Noire just feels like I'm played an incredibly shallow version of CSI with fedoras.

  • captain_Carl #3 11 months ago

    Subtitled apparently.

  • IonOnion #4 11 months ago

    Oooh close! 3DS was almost third in the charts.

  • God_Octo #5 11 months ago

    Yay! Go InFamous 2! I'm playing through it now, and its brilliant fun. Just crossing the city is so fun and easy to do- it blows the socks off Assassin's Creed for movement.

  • driftdraft #6 11 months ago

    It's great to see some western titles in their charts too!

  • hello_fi #7 11 months ago

    "Ah so! Me rikey srave rabour practice of Team Bondi! Me rikey game rong time!"

  • TomDent93 #8 11 months ago

    Yay for infamous 2!

    Fuck off LA Noire.

  • Eoin #9 11 months ago

    Surely the big story here is the near 400% increase in PSP Go sales? A few more months of weekly growth like that and Sony will have to reconsider killing it off.

  • metalangel #10 11 months ago

    Maybe this is proof the Japanese love shit games?

  • IronGiant #11 11 months ago

    Well deserved for infamous2, just completed it and really enjoyed it. The psp go continues to set sales records ;)

  • Snake_2011 #12 11 months ago

    nice there both great games.

  • ShadowSnypa786 #13 11 months ago

    Good to see Infamous 2 doing great :D prefer it to LA NOIRE in every single way!

  • Toothball #14 11 months ago

    @Centrifugal

    My beef with it was that I wanted to play it like a Phoenix Wright or other point and click game, where I'm usually able to pick away at the cases until I figure out who actually committed the crime. That was going well enough to start, but then you get a question wrong and suddenly everything you don't want to happen, happens. I wasn't solving anything at that point, but the story was determined to continue. Then it left me at a point where it insisted I do Street Crimes for a bit, which I'd been avoiding in favour of the detective work.

    I should get through it sometime, but it just left me cold and even more keen to play another Phoenix Wright game.

  • frunk #15 11 months ago

    Wow! - Earth Defense Force Insect Armageddon (D3 Publisher, Xbox 360): 17,817 NEW!

    Every XBox owner in japan must have bought it!

    I kid... I kid...

  • SpaceMonkey77 #16 11 months ago

    LA Noire has its flaws like all Rockstar games, but while its not for everyone, it's good to see japanese gamers sucking it up. Its clear that a game like LA Noire wouldn't be made in japan, especially with it being a period piece, but shows that gamers out there can see something unique and good, even if its western.

    Infamous 2 also doing well is also very encouraging, (I wonder if the inclusion of Cole in the E3 SFxTekken game helped it at all, its possible). Infamous 2 might also be doing well out there, because the first game was offered as a free game when PSN went down, possibly in japan too. Guess its true that free publicity works.

    Hopefully, this trend continues, as they start to see that western/gaijin games aren't as bad as they used to be many years ago.

  • P1GEONPOO #17 11 months ago

    @hello_fi
    what the hell are you going on about? is that some sort of a joke? or do you really need to go back to school?