Phantasy Star Portable is latest PSP hit game in Japan

You might remember that when Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G launched for PSP it kick-started a hardware-buying frenzy, not to mention it made its publisher Capcom lots of yen by selling over two million copies.

And now it looks like PSP owners have a new favourite game to spend their money on: Sega's Phantasy Star Portable. The game went on sale last Thursday and reportedly sold over 217,000 copies in one day. To put it into perspective, that's over double what big name PS3 games such as Soul Calibur IV have sold on their first day in Japan.

But it's also three times less than Monster Hunter's day one release performance, which saw 670,000 copies fly off shop shelves.

As well as selling in large quantities at release, Monster Hunter and Phantasy Star have one other thing in common: neither game has a European release date scheduled. Which is odd considering how popular they've been in their domestic market. Watch this space though as that could change at some point and we'll be sure to let you know if it does.