Our friends and affiliates over at Next Generation Cube reported the following:

Famitsu Weekly has published the results of their annual Most Popular Developer poll. Famitsu is the most popular and the only gaming magazine that matters in Japan, so this poll is very revealing and important. In contrast to last year's poll, Sega oddly took the first place spot away from Squaresoft. Square had a the first place last year, and Sega didn't even show up, but Sega stole the first place spot by 3 percentage points. Squaresoft did make it in second. Nintendo (EAD, I'm assuming) took the third place spot and trailed Square by 3%. Konami held fourth place at 11% and Capcom fifth at just 7%.

Last year Square took first place, followed by Namco. Konami was at third, and then Enix, and finally, Sony showed up at fifth. As you can see the results have changed drastically. It is a shock to see Sega at number one, beating the huge Japanese developer, Square. It's great to see Nintendo at third, their presence wasn't on the top five.

Note that four of the five developers listed on this year's poll support the GCN (Sega, Nintendo, Konami, and Capcom). This is great news and it looks as if the GCN's presence will be much stronger in Japan. If this poll means the Japanese are getting tired of Square, Sony's recent purchase in the company may have been dumb. Only time will tell, only time will heal.