Japan Charts: New Naruto title on PS2 takes the top spot

Bandai's latest PS2 title based on the hugely popular Naruto anime and manga franchise has gone straight in at number one in the Japanese software chart, the only new release to dent the top ten in the quiet week following the Bon holiday.

The action title - which sold around 92,000 units in its first weekend and once again stars the increasingly popular young ninjas of Konoha village - is the latest in a series of Naruto titles to perform strongly at retail, including a number of extremely successful GameCube titles.

Further down the ranking, Nintendo's DS beat 'em up title Jump Super Stars took second place in the chart, with two further DS titles - Gentle Brain Exercises and DS Training for Adults: Work Your Brain - coming in at four and five respectively.

Konami's Winning Eleven 9 is also still selling strongly, at number three this week, as is Sega's GBA arcade conversion The King of Beetle Mushiking, while the GameCube has a decent week with two titles still in the top ten - Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness at number seven, and Mario Superstar Baseball at number eight.

In hardware terms, the DS has one of its strongest weeks in recent months, taking a massive 51 per cent of the market - representing sell-through of almost 81,000 units, and beating off competition from the PS2 and PSP by a huge margin.

The PS2 had just under 21 per cent market share, while the PSP languished on just 15 per cent share - representing sales of around 23,000 units, just ahead of the Game Boy Advance, which had 11 per cent share and sold over 17,000 units.

The Nintendo DS continues to build its lead over the PlayStation Portable in Japan, and is rapidly approaching the 1.5 million sales mark in the region as measured from January 1st this year, while the PSP has yet to hit 1.2 million.