Japan Charts: GT4 Prologue still on top; market drops on release drought

Sony's Gran Turismo 4: Prologue continued to be the best selling software title in Japan last week, but the software market as a whole dropped to just over 500,000 units as a limited set of new releases failed to drive sales.

The best selling new title was Konami's Anubis: Zone of the Enders Special Edition, which managed to shift 21,000 units despite effectively being a re-release of an old game, propelling it to number three in the chart.

The rest of the top ten was entirely made up of older games - with both editions of Capcom's GBA RPG, Mega Man Battle Network 4 Tournament, making it into the ranking (Blue Moon at number two, and Red Sun at number five), while a pair of Cube titles, namely Tomy's Naruto 2 and Nintendo's Mario Kart: Double Dash, took up numbers eight and nine.

The rest of the top ten was entirely made up of PS2 titles, with Sony's Hot Shots Golf 4 at number four, Hudson's Momotaro Railway 12 at number six (don't expect to see that one in Europe any time this millennium), and Namco's irrepressible Taiko no Tatsujin: 3rd Generation at number seven.

Square Enix' Full Metal Alchemist props up the chart, at number ten this week; although the giant publisher is likely to be slightly disappointed that the game has failed to capture the number one spot in any week since its release, the franchise as a whole (which encompasses manga comic books and an enormously popular animated TV series as well as the videogame) has been a huge success for the company, and further games seem like a certainty.

In hardware terms, the PS2 strengthened its lead over the other platforms as overall sales declined, boosted by strong sales of the PS2 Racing Pack, which features a limited edition console and a copy of GT4 Prologue. Sony's console held almost 46 per cent of the market this week, ahead of 37.5 per cent for the GBA.

GameCube meanwhile has seen its market share tumble to just under 15 per cent again, from over 25 per cent at Christmas - more badly affected than the PS2 by a lack of new software, as its back catalogue is less extensive.