Japan Charts: Sega's new Sakura Wars takes the top spot

The latest title in Sega's hugely popular Sakura Wars franchise, Sakura Wars V, has gone straight in at number one in Japan, selling some 112,000 units in its first weekend on sale and leading a strong list of new PS2 releases.

Namco's We Love Katamari was the next highest ranked new release, in at number three with sales of around 61,000 units, followed by Square Enix' latest, Musashi: Samurai Legend, which sold around 58,000 units.

However, ahead of both of those new PS2 titles was last week's new release Gentle Brain Exercises, another unconventional title for the Nintendo DS, which was ranked at number two and look set to repeat the success of DS Training for Adults: Work Your Brain, which is still in the top ten after nearly two months, ranked this week at number seven.

Further down the ranking, Sega's beetle battling GBA title The King of Beetle Mushiking: Greatest Champion is still selling well, at number five this week, as is Bandai's latest Gundam title on PS2, Gundam: True Odyssey, which comes in at number six.

Unusual titles such as Gentle Brain Exercises are clearly doing the business for the Nintendo DS in Japan, with the platform once again taking the lion's share of the market for hardware sales this week.

The DS had 40 per cent market share, representing around 41,500 sales, compared with 27 per cent for the PS2 and just 20 per cent for the PSP - with around 11 per cent share for the Game Boy Advance and 2 per cent for the Cube making up the remainder of the numbers.