Videogame hardware and software sales plummeted in Japan in the last seven days, with consoles being hit the worst. The downturn comes as the global economy is under pressure because of the credit crisis.

The Nintendo DS was the biggest seller, managing to get almost 32,000 units to customers, which means that it dropped more than 10,000 in sales in just one week, with one possible reason being the announcement regarding the launch of the new DSi. The PlayStation Portable from Sony took second place, with sales of some 23,900 units, registering a drop of just 2,000 over the previous week.

As far as home consoles are concerned, the Nintendo Wii managed to outsell both its rivals again, with almost 23,000 units sold in one week. The Xbox 360 continues its good run, which began when prices were cut in September, and managed 7,762 units in sales, more than the PlayStation 2 from Sony, which only had 6,982. The PlayStation 3 is placed last in the hardware chart again, with only 5,734 units delivered to customers.

Sales are expected to pick up again as the new PSP-3000 and Nintendo DSi are launched, while home consoles will enjoy greater demand as the all important holiday shopping season debuts.

The best sold game of the week was Macross Ace Frontier (based on a popular anime show) for the PlayStation Portable and sold 104,000 units. Pokemon Platinum is at number two, still going strong with sales of 86,000, while Rhythm Heaven for the Nintendo DS was in third place.

The bad news is that the games on the lower end of the top ten (the eighth, ninth and tenth) only managed to sell around 8,000 units in a week, further underlining the slump in sales that hit the industry overall.