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Japan Charts: Gundam title returns to No.1 as DS extends hardware lead

Bandai's Mobile Suit Gundam: One Year War reclaimed the top of the Japanese software charts last week, while Nintendo's DS console continued to build on its sales lead over the PSP with yet another strong week at retail.

Bandai's Mobile Suit Gundam: One Year War has reclaimed the top of the Japanese software charts, while Nintendo's DS console continued to build on its sales lead over the PSP with yet another strong week at retail.

The Gundam title, which was originally launched back in the first week of April, displaced the previous number one in the charts, Square Enix' latest RPG, Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song, which dropped to number three.

A very poor line-up of new releases saw overall software sales slump somewhat in this, the first half of Japan's Golden Week national holidays, and the highest ranked new title was another Bandai game, Bouken-Ou Beat: Darkness Century, a PS2 RPG which sold around 17,000 units to come in at number nine.

The only other new title in the top ten was the tenth-ranked game, Idea Factory's PS2 strategy title Spectral Force Chronicle, with the remainder of the chart largely seeing last week's big sellers shuffle places.

The big winner was Nintendo's DS platform, whose major recent releases - Nintendogs and Tomy's anime-based Naruto: Saikyou Ninja Daikesshuu 3 - continued to sell strongly, and drove the platform to the top of the table in terms of hardware sales.

The DS accounted for some 39 per cent of all hardware sales during the week, compared to just under 24 per cent for the PSP and just under 25 per cent for the PS2. Strong sales over the past month have seen the DS defy analyst predictions by clawing back a significant amount of ground from the PSP.

With the DS entering the year with a massive head-start in terms of installed base, Sony's console needs to outsell it by a significant margin just to achieve parity - but recent successes mean that the year to date unit sales difference between the two consoles is now under 70,000 units, and a couple more weeks like this one could see the DS actually taking the crown from its hotly tipped rival.

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Rob Fahey avatar
Rob Fahey is a former editor of GamesIndustry.biz who has spent several years living in Japan and probably still has a mint condition Dreamcast Samba de Amigo set.