Japan Charts: Straight in at number one for Onimusha 3

The third instalment in Capcom's Onimusha franchise has debuted at number one in the Japanese software charts, but sales of over 430,000 units in its first weekend on sale are still slower than the previous title in the series'.

The only other new release in the chart was Genki's racing title Kaido Battle 2: Chain Reaction, which came in at number four with sales of around 72,000 units, but several titles from the previous weeks continued to sell very well.

In fact, February has been a remarkably good month for the Japanese software market, with all four weeks showing sales well over the weekly average, and a large number of new releases performing strongly.

Koei's Sengoku Musou (Samurai Warriors) and Bandai's SD Gundam GGeneration SEED are two of the best performers on the PS2, and are at numbers two and six respectively this week, while re-releases have also done extremely well - with Konami's Winning Eleven 7 International at number three, and Square Enix' Final Fantasy X-2 International at number eight.

Also falling into the re-release bracket are Nintendo's Pokemon Fire Red (number seven) and Pokemon Leaf Green (number nine) titles, along with the company's budget priced Famicom Mini range - of which two titles, Super Mario Bros (number five) and Legend of Zelda (number ten) make it into this week's ranking.

In terms of hardware sales, the GBA still has the edge - with 49 per cent of the market share by units, while the PS2 is slightly behind with just under 44 per cent. The GameCube continues to be dwarfed in market share terms, with only 6 per cent of the market this week, and desperately needs some new software releases to lift it back towards the strong sales achieved over Christmas.

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