Reuters has obtained information from Enterbrain, the publisher of the popular Japanese magazine Famitsu, which details how various games and gaming platforms performed in the first six months of 2008 on the Japanese markets. And although everyone expects a Nintendo domination, the PlayStation Portable has managed to come up on top.

The bad news is that the gaming market in Japan as a whole, counting both hardware and software sales, went down significantly when compared to the same period of 2007. From April to September, which is the period counted as the first six months of the fiscal year, the overall value of the market went down by 21% and it's now estimated at 238 billion dollars. Reuters cites data regarding the fact that it's the first time in four years when the overall value of the market has declined.

Hardware sales alone went down by 33%, mostly because it had expanded greatly in 2007 as the new console entered the market. The PlayStation Portable managed to sell more than 1.5 million units during this period while the Nintendo DS is registered as selling a little over 1.3 million units. The PSP has gone over the 10 million unit mark while the DS is over 23 million gaming consoles sold.

The Wii is in third place as far as sales go with 1,105,000 units sold, followed by the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, which are pretty far behind.

Mario Kart Wii is the best selling title of the period with a little over 1,744,000 copies sold in six months with Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G on the PSP comes in second with sales of 1,602,386 units. Pokemon Platinum, although just launched, is in third place and set to quickly overtake the other two games.

Analysts are expecting the worldwide economic downturn to lead to further shrinkage of the market.