Japan Charts: Pokemon on top once more as Emerald debuts at No.1

The latest update to the Pokemon franchise, Game Boy Advance title Pokemon Emerald, has gone straight in at number one in the Japanese sales charts - racking up almost 800,000 unit sales in its first week on sale.

That compares favourably with sales of Pokemon Crystal, the standalone title which followed on from the launch of Pokemon Gold and Silver in much the same way that Emerald follows Ruby and Sapphire.

Crystal racked up sales of 550,000 in its first week, and went on to sell 1.55 million units in total; the stronger week one sales of Emerald suggest that the title could go on to outsell its predecessor significantly.

Two other major new releases fill out the top three this week, with Koei's Samurai Warriors: Mosho Den selling around 190,000 units and taking the number two place, while Square Enix' latest Final Fantasy XI expansion pack, Chains of Promathia, sold over 100,000 units on the PS2 alone.

The combined sales of those major new releases, along with a number of other new releases which crept in further down the chart, raised weekly sales of the top 100 titles to almost 1.5 million, up a massive 316 per cent week on week.

Other new titles in the top ten included Konami's latest PS2 title based on the popular Prince of Tennis anime series, The Prince Of Tennis: Form The Strongest Team! at number five, Atlus' Kowloon Youma Gauken Ki at number seven, and Koei's Angelique Etoile at number nine.

In hardware terms, the Game Boy Advance took a massive 67 per cent of the market this week, while the PlayStation 2's market share dropped to just over 27 per cent, and the GameCube dropped below five per cent.