The latest Media Create charts are out, showing the rather unsurprising news that Animal Crossing: New Leaf has returned to the top of the software chart, having been displaced by Devil May Cry last week.

Perhaps the more notable performance was that of Level-5's 3DS life-sim Fantasy Life, which surged back up the chart having been re-stocked, showing high demand remaining despite it being largely unavailable for several weeks. The game remains without a confirmed western release.

We can also now get an idea of just how well Animal Crossing has been doing in regards to download sales. Nintendo today revealed that the game has sold a total of 2.73 million units in 2012. As a savvy poster on NeoGAF points out, we know its Media Create sales - which only track physical copies sold - stood at just under 2 million by the end of 2012. That means the game had been downloaded around an impressive 800,000 times by the end of year, be it either traditional downloads or through download cards.

Here is the software chart for the week of January 21st to 27th.

Whilst Nintendo is now returning to profits, it's clear that Wii U may be in for a bit of a rough ride whilst the software spring is somewhat dry through the first quarter of 2013. The company may be looking to the longer term by steadily releasing its key software throughout the year, but hardware sales continue to stagnate in Japan, with the console now firmly behind the aging PS3. There's no such bad news for 3DS though, whose own rocky patch is now nothing more than a distant memory.