Naruto notches 10 million worldwide sales

By Robert Purchese Published 12 January, 2012

Uzumaki something popular.

Naruto, that weird spiky-haired manga beat-'em-up franchise that spits out games you probably ignore, has achieved 10 million sales now.

Streamers!

North American people bought most of the Naruto games (4.3 million), followed by Europe (3.8 million) and then Japan (1.9 million).

The series started with Naruto: Clash of Ninja in 2003.

The series broke from the norm with Naruto: Rise of a Ninja in 2007, a Ubisoft-built platform adventure and beat-'em-up game.

"Rise of a Ninja is by far the best Naruto game around," declared Eurogamer's Naruto: Rise of a Ninja review, "and its absolutely lovely cel-shaded graphics and gorgeous, authentic environments set it head and shoulders above the competition in terms of anime licensed games."

The series' usual developer, CyberConnect2, will release Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations on 30th March for PS3 and Xbox 360. Namco Bandai is publishing.

All-in-all, we can expect more Naruto in the future.

Generations.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (10) Latest comment 5 months ago

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

  • SonOfGoku #1 5 months ago

    They appear to be using the shadow clone jutsu in the developers offices...note that I know thats quite a geeky thing to say....had to be done :)

  • StolenGlory #2 5 months ago

    "SonOfGoku#1 2 minutes ago

    They appear to be using the shadow clone jutsu in the developers offices...note that I know thats quite a geeky thing to say....had to be done"

    Presumably Activision are also proficent in this particualr jutsu; given how similiar each CoD instalment tends to be to one another.

    ZING!

  • megalomaniac_uk #3 5 months ago

    Have to agree with Eurogamer there, 'Rise of a Ninja' was and remains by far the best Naruto game imho.

  • steve1979 #4 5 months ago

    All 3 Naruto games on the 360 have been great fun.

  • Shikasama #5 5 months ago

    It's a bit like the Dargonball Z games. If you weren't particularly exposed to the source material you'd pick up the box and blow it off as a waste of time, but if you actually played it you'd have an absolute blast.

  • menage #6 5 months ago

    Rise of the Ninja was the best Naruto game? I thought NUNS2 was way better than that piece of shit. The combat was way too limited, everybody had the same moves (apart form one or 2 supers)and it basically boiled down to a "turn into a wooden log decoy" fest. And the roster was way too small.

    I was done within a few hours while NUNS2 kept me going for a while.

  • GamesConnoisseur #7 5 months ago

    Naruto anime and manga series do extreme combats, a single battle with a baddie could covers three or more episodes/comics! Though also include dialogues with characters, questions/storytellings.

    So Rise of the Ninja and The Broken Bond on the X360 may not have best combat mechanics but they really do best represent the whole feel of Naruto more than the Storms 1 and 2, I was more bored with latest reliance heavily on combats. Maybe simply cos I m never much of a Street Fighter or fighting games fan but more into Action Adventure like Zelda and such.

    So maybe it's all down to the balance of the genre types whether purely combat, adventuring or a mixtures, as my son and I loves watching the anime and got the collection of DVDs from the start to the recent releases. My son prefers Rise of Ninja while I the Broken Bond.

  • MDJRUK68 #8 5 months ago

    Post deleted at 00:58:33 17-01-2012

  • rivuzu #9 5 months ago

    Ooh, forgot about Generations. Thanks for reminding me @Bertie ! Straight on the pre-order list.
    People can slate and say what they want about the Naruto games, but at the end of the day the action in the manga/anime transitions so brilliantly into gameplay that it cannot be beaten. Playing it online in NUNS2 was also something of a treat - getting my behind handed to me but refusing to play as anyone other than Temari was not the best way forwards!

  • FenderMaster #10 5 months ago

    Ultimate Ninja Storm 1 and 2 were actually really fun games, with possibly the best cel shaded graphics ever seen in a game, and some fights were mind blowingly spectacular, if a little over reliant on QTE's...

    I always thought it was a shame how they didn't make more of the adventure mode in the first game, the village exploration was sort of cool, but you didn't get to explore outside the village like in the 360 game.

    Still theres alot of potential for a great game there. I may be too old for it, but I'd still love to see a 3D action adventure with spectacular battles and a fighting system with the depth of a pure fighter...

    It could happen!