http://amazon.co.jp/gp/bestsellers/videogames/

I just thought it would be neat to look at this. Im not sure how popular Amazon is over there (if at all), and I dont even really like to use the Amazon US bestsellers page as a definitive gauge of sales trends. That being said, its still an interesting page to browse. 

Taking a quick peek.... 

PS2 (yes 2) and DS completely dominate, no surprise there.

The Wii is at #10.

X360 actually has 2 titles in the top 25, with preorders of Halo3 at #19 and Katamari at #25. 

I find it odd that there are no PS3 games in the top 50 even, the highest ranked PS3 title on the current chart is
"Bladestorm" at #54, which looks pretty cool. 

Chart seems kind of odd doesnt it? 

I have a question why do many Japanese video game covers have English on them? Is Japan a bilingual nation?

They love their engrish.

Japan is most definitely not bilingual, but there are lots of loan-words from English, and it's very fashionable.

Kinda like how you might see anime geeks use bits of Japanese, but everyone does it ten times more. =P

Japanese actually study English throughout their schooling as a requirement. The focus quite a bit more on the grammar side of things than pronunciation and speaking. I've met many Japanese people that didn't speak well at all and would state that they didn't but their reading comprehension and writing skills were pretty darn good...

everyone in japan knows some kind of english, but it's usually quite bad, and the futher they get out of school the worse it gets. People that speak english well don't come around often unless you go to the right place.

Hi. I'm Japanese who live in Japan.

I'll post my observation although it might be wrong. I'll do my best, anyway.

Amazon is quite popular here in Japan as well as other countries, but I don't think the bestsellers page is the epitome of Japanese videogame market as it seems to me that usually more core-gamer like people are influencing the chart.

And it seems that games which can be a bit embarrassing to buy at shops (i.e. girls character games) sometimes sell well at Amazon here, too.

I feel PS2's games selling well lately at Amazon might be partly because of the above reasons.

PS2 is still popular here too, but I doubt if it has the same level of momentum as it does in the States.   

The Wii still sometimes becomes sold out at Amazon, and I think that's maybe the reason why it was ranked at 10 when you had a look at it.

Like some guys pointed out, we study English at school from the age of 12 to 18, but unfortunately, it doesn't mean most people are English fluent although we understand some words, fortunately.

And, yes, we love to use foreign languages everywhere especially when we want to make names look and sound cool.

I imagine that's why some names end up having English and French words at a time like some titles.

For those games, we tend to buy them without thinking about the meanings of the titles even a bit.

I don't believe even 1% of the people who bought MGS somehow know the meaning of "Solid".

Sorry for my poor English, I hope this will give a bit of information.

Wow, thanks for the insight Shinichi. I have some friends from Japan who visited the states, their English was actually very respectable. They helped me learn Japanese and I helped them with their English, (and of course their English was WAY better than my Japanese)

Welcome to the forum!

Yeah, amazon.co.jp does not provide an unbiased sample of Japanese consumers. It's very otaku-oriented. Otaku-ish anime games/video/figurines are often the best selling stuff there. But if you look beyond that, you can still find some general trends that permeate the society (i.e. the popularity of DS games, etc). It's not entirely useless.

As for English education; it sucks to hear that it hasn't improved over the years. Back when I was in school, they taught us materials that had little relevance to the practical use of English. Since then, I sort of hoped that it would improve over time, but I guess it didn't. Probably it's a cultural thing - Jpn people are so afraid of making grammatical mistakes and easily get embarrassed so they think they might as well not speak at all. Maybe due to their inferiority complex toward Western culture. I don't know. I don't see a quick fix coming anytime soon.