Methodology
W/E October 19th, 2008
W/E October 26th, 2008
2W/E November 9th, 2008

Today we present to you the worldwide and regional sales for the four weeks ending December 28th, 2008.  As you might expect, there was a sizeable spike in the final week as a number of people took their Christmas Wiis online to download some games.  Titles in bold italic were released in some region in December.

• World of Goo continues to top the charts in the Americas, and has had a strong 1.5-week debut in PAL, but takes only third worldwide to two titles that have done well in all three regions (My Aquarium, Tetris Party).
• Not much new stuff has shown up overall, since the flash-in-the-pan titles that pop up for a week or two and then disappear get shoved well down the charts when compared to monthly sales for the consistent top-sellers.
• Japan is one exception, which had four new titles pop up in December in addition to two that were released in November.  We'll see next month which ones have real staying power.
• My Pokemon Ranch is close to going gold worldwide, though it still has a long way to go to catch Final Fantasy in total revenue.
• Some new American releases -- Fun! Fun! Minigolf and Tiki Towers are both at about 7,000 with one week of sales, while Hockey Allstar Shootout did about 6,000 in three weeks.
• You may notice that there are no Strong Bad games up here.  This is consistent with the prevailing trend -- the games only really matter in the Americas (and to a lesser extent the UK and Australia), and each successive episode has sold less than the one before it.  Strong Bad Episode 5: 8-bit Is Enough, did less than 4,000 in two weeks on sale in the Americas, most of it in the first day.  Perhaps the episodes were too closely spaced for most consumers to be ready to pick up each one as it came out.
• World of Goo, Tetris Party, and My Aquarium have been ranked 1-2-3 every week since November.
  

• There's a similar effect at work here, with most new games not selling consistently well enough to break into a monthly chart -- no December release is in the top 10 worldwide.
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the Master System breaks into the top 20 worldwide with a third place showing in the Americas (it also did about 4,000 in a half-week on sale in PAL).
• Secret of Mana also debuted with a half-week on sale in PAL and about 9,000 sales.  Though it didn't make the top 10 in any region (it was 17th in the Americas and 11th in both PAL and Japan), it still sold enough for 13th worldwide in December.
• There's no data for other new releases in the America and PAL (they didn't come close to charting), but there is some information available for a couple of games in Japan:  Ninja-Kun - Magical Castle Adventure for the NES sold about 2,300 in three weeks (17th for the month), while The Mystery of Atlantis for the NES sold about 2,100 in all four weeks (19th for the month).
• Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario Bros. are both closing in on selling a million each in the Americas alone.  The two games have ranked 1-2 every week in the Americas since November.

Worldwide revenues were calculated using an average December exchange rate of $1 = 0.74 € = 90 ¥.  With the weaker dollar, worldwide revenues are a bit higher than previously shown.

Thanks to TWRoO and his crew for collecting PAL data, and smbu2000 for collecting Japan data.  If you have access to the Nintendo Channel and want to help collect usage data, send a PM to TWRoO if you're in PAL or to me if you're anywhere else in the world.

If there are any games not shown here that you'd like some specific numbers for, let me know in the comments and I'll provide what I can.

Keith Jackson
kjackson@vgchartz.com