Pokemon Soul and Heart Dominate Japan

The Japanese videogame market has been reinvigorated in the last few weeks by the release of the all new and cheaper PlayStation 3 Slim and by the launch of fresh Pokemon videogames. These twin forces seem, for the moment at least, to be holding up the market in preparation for the upcoming slew of releases that will arrive before Christmas.

For the second time in a row, the Nintendo DSi is the best sold gaming console, with more than 66,000 units sold in one week, proving that there's still a huge market for the handheld. The PlayStation 3 managed to retain the second spot in the chart, selling a little over 51,000 units, but it seems that the huge numbers of the initial week will not be replicated any time soon.

The PlayStation Portable is in third place, selling just over 21,000 consoles to players and managing to keep ahead of the Nintendo Wii, the home console that is sliding further down the hardware chart only managing to sell 16,698 units. The DS Lite is still going strong, despite some describing it as obsolete, selling better than the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the PlayStation 2 from Sony.

When it comes to the videogame chart, the Pokemon franchise manages to hold on to the top two spots of the chart for the second week in a row. Soul Silver and Heart Gold were released for the Nintendo DS and the two managed to sell very close to 500,000 units in one week, as Japanese gamers indulge in their Pokemon habit.

Third place goes to a new release, Tales of Vesperia from Namco Bandai, which sold 216,593 copies on the PlayStation 3. Another new videogame, Jikkyou Pawapuro Pro Yakkyuu Portable 4 from Konami moved 104,377 units to get fourth place, while SaGa 2: Hihou Densetsu Goddess of Destiny is in fifth place.