Japan Charts: Silent Hill 4 goes top as sales hit rock bottom

The Japanese game software market is in the grip of the summer slump, with sales hitting their lowest point of the year to date last week - even despite the number one debut of Konami's Silent Hill 4: The Room.

The survival horror title sold some 41,000 units to take the top spot, and three other new titles also made it into the top ten - but overall sales of the top 100 titles declined to under 450,000 units, a drop of about 15 per cent over last week.

The other new releases in the top ten were led by Gunslinger Girl Vol. 2 at number six, which is actually a DVD launch but includes PS2 compatible game content and as such appears in the game chart.

Two other PS2 titles also debuted in the ranking, with Slotter Up Core 3 at number seven and Espgaluda at number ten - neither of which are particularly likely to appear outside Japan.

Sammy's Pachinko Slot! Fist of the North Star was at number two this week, down one place from its former occupation of the number one spot, and overall the PS2's domination of the chart was increased - with seven PS2 titles in the top ten, compared with two GBA games and one Cube title (Pikmin 2 at number five).

In hardware terms, the market was also down, unsurprisingly, and the GBA continued to dominate sales - with 48 per cent market share, compared to 43 per cent for the PS2 and just 7.5 per cent for the GameCube.