Japan Charts: Square Enix' latest takes the top spot, Mario Kart still selling strongly

Slime Morimori Dragon Quest, the latest GBA action adventure title from Square Enix, has gone in at number one in the Japanese software charts, while Nintendo's Mario Kart and Sony's Siren continue to sell well.

Although the market has declined in terms of unit sales this week, Slime Morimori Dragon Quest sold about 74,000 units, while Mario Kart (in second place) sold 73,000, and Siren managed 39,000 units, making the top three relatively healthy.

Interestingly, however, Siren was the highest ranked PS2 title - despite a price cut to the PS2 which saw hardware sales of the system rocketing past 100,000 units for the first time since late August. This would imply that the improved hardware sales did nothing for software sales - so what are all those additional hardware units being used for, then?

Elsewhere in the charts, there's a notable entry for Namco's Taiko no Tatsujin (Drum Expert) game at number six; the rhythm game continues to sell well and was noted as a key reason for Namco's financial success in the company's first half results last week.

EA's NBA Live 2004 is at number seven in the chart, and is the only western-developed title in the chart this week. It lands in just ahead of a somewhat unusual new entry - namely a PSone title, Sister Princess 2: Premium Fan Disc, which appears at number eight in the charts. Unsurprisingly, this is the latest product based on a hugely popular anime and renai (dating) game franchise.

In hardware terms, the latest PS2 price cut (which drove the price of the system from 24,800 Yen (â'¬192) to 19,800 Yen (â'¬154)) has given the system's market share a huge boost, with almost 56 per cent of the hardware market this week - ahead of the Game Boy Advance for the first time in months.

The GBA trails on 24.3 per cent, and the GameCube also has an extremely good week - managing almost 19 per cent market share despite the larger volume of units, and still benefiting from both its recent price cut and the launch of Mario Kart: Double Dash in the previous week.

At the other end of the market, there's no respite for Microsoft's Xbox, which has only 0.29 per cent market share and has fallen behind the PSone once again (0.47 per cent share). The next big event for the Xbox in Japan comes this week, as the price of the console drops significantly and a new bundle to go along with Project Gotham Racing 2 rolls out - a pre-Christmas sales push which Microsoft will be hoping will allow them to claw back a little market share in the Far East.

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