The Master Chief Climbs Mt. Fuji News

Over the last week, the general gaming press has been spewing out Halo 3 news pieces like a photocopying machine gone awol: 'Halo 3 hits yet another sales milestone that we all knew it would,' and so forth. However, here's some news about Halo 3 that really is a shock to the system (please note the lack of sarcasm).

Halo 3 has rocketed to number one in the Japanese game charts (according to Japanese firm Media Create), selling 59,000 copies in total. It managed to pip to the post handheld titles such as Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core on PSP (the previous number one) and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Toki on DS.

Given that handhelds are the most popular consoles in Japan (largely due to the success of the DS and DS Lite), and more impressively that Microsoft has only sold roughly 450,000 360s, that makes Halo 3's achievement on the Japanese market pretty mind-boggling.

Essentially, that means about one in eight Xbox 360 owners in Japan has a copy of Halo 3 which, again, is made significantly more noteworthy by the fact that the Halo series, and first person shooters in general, have typical fared badly in Japan compared to the Western markets.