Following the end of the main winter gift giving season in Japan, the market has bounced backed strongly with a busy week full of new releases and relatively strong sales. The number one title was the latest in Namco Bandai’s extremely popular .hack series of story-led role-playing games for PlayStation 2, with over 136,000 in sales. This is the second of the G.U. series to reach number one, the second volume only being denied the top spot by the launch of Pokemon Diamond/Pearl. What will be known in the West as Wario: Master of Disguise also debuted strongly for DS at number two and over 91,000 in sales, with a game reminiscent of the earlier Wario Land platform titles. The latest in the Shining Force series of strategy role-playing games also performed well for PS2 with 72,000 in sales. Dragon Quest Monsters – Joker, last week’s number two selling title, is now reported to be almost completely sold out, appearing only at number forty-two in the charts. Perhaps the most notable new entry in the top ten, though, is Gears of War at number seven, only the third Xbox 360 to enter the top ten, after Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 and Blue Dragon. Although the game’s sales were relatively low at 33,000, and seemed to have no major effect on hardware sales it did perform better than the Wii’s Excite Truck, which debuted at number thirteen with less than 29,000 units sold. Although key Western title Halo has never sold well in Japan, Gears of War was likely helped by its third, rather than first, person viewpoint and a specially-recorded Japanese voice track. Nevertheless, Xbox 360 hardware sales actually fell from 9,035 units last week to 7,041 units this week. The software success of Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 also had little effect on hardware sales, with only Mistwalker’s Blue Dragon so far being able to attract anything other than a core niche audience to the format. Despite continued stock problems for both Nintendo’s key formats, the Nintendo DS was again the best selling console of the week, with 127,770 units in total. The Wii was next with 86,395 units sold, followed by the PSP with 37,032 units. The PlayStation 3 experienced another poor week of sales, with not a single software title in the top fifty and only 21,105 unit sales – despite again having no reports of significant hardware shortages. The PlayStation 2 sold 20,169 units, the Xbox 360 7,041, the Game Boy Advance family of consoles 3,456 and the GameCube 554.

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