Japan's best-selling games of '08 revealed

Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G was the most successful game in Japan last year, selling a beastly 2,452,111 copies.

But Famitsu's top 100 best-selling games of 2008 (reproduced by PS3 Hyper) list was dominated by handheld rival DS, which counted 47 game-entries and over 50 per cent of the market. PSP titles filled only 15 spaces.

The biggest performer for DS was Pokémon Platinum, which took second place overall for selling 2,187,337 copies. We can expect the game on 22nd May.

The third most successful title, Wii Fit, sold 2,149,131 units and was one of 15 games for Wii that littered the list.

Sony wasn't too far behind, though: the PS2 had 12 representatives and the PS3 had 10. However, Metal Gear Solid 4 was the biggest console achiever for Sony, and managed just 686,254 sales.

The other PS3 games, in order of placement, were Devil May Cry 4, PES 2009, a Yakuza spin-off (Ryu ga Gotoku Kenzan!), Gran Turismo 5 Prologue Spec III, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit and Valkyria Chronicles.

And that all looks good compared to Microsoft, whose Xbox 360 was represented solely by Tales of Vesperia at 87. It sold just 161,070 copies.

Nintendo emerged as the best publisher and accounted for 19.1 million sales, Namco Bandai was a distant second with 8.5 million sales, Capcom took 5.3 million sales, Konami had 5 million sales and Square Enix had 4 million sales.