July 4th to the 10th sees DS non-games hanging tough amidst a slew of new PS2 titles...

Courtesy of Media-Create, we have the most recent sales figures from Japan.

Another healthy week for the Japanese software market was again powered by hot new PS2 titles and DS non-game mainstays. The week saw the debut of the latest in Sega's popular Sakura Wars series dominate the charts with an opening of more than 100k units sold, as well as the return of Square's swordmaster Musashi. In between those big releases rolled in We Love Katamari, as Japan proved that indeed they...love...Katamari.

Amidst those titles, DS "games" Gentle Brain Exercises and Brain Training for Adults continued to show that atypical gamers were willing to vote with their wallets when offered the appropriate software. The former in particular, which released last week to strong sales, notably sold even more copies its second week. Finally, the GBA's popular bug battler Mushi King also maintained a place in the Top 10. Take a look:

On the hardware side...yes, the DS was on top again, this time seeing sales jump to above 40k units despite no new releases in the week. Thats truely a lot of welcome new gamers in the fold. In fact, making the inevitable sales comparison it can be seen that the DS doubled-up on the PSP for that week...and some very strong titles are looming in the next few weeks that ought to ensure that sales stay up there. These include a new Naruto RPG and the pending smash hit Jump Superstars. Actually, J.S. is already a smash hit, with the announcement that it has already seen 200k pre-orders as of Wednesday.

How strong are the Nintendo portables right now in Japan? The combined DS and GBA SP sales best the Sony side (PS2 + PSP). And thats before factoring in the GC and GBA sales, which add another 99 or so right there...I kid. The GC and the GBA didn't do that bad relatively speaking considering they held course with past weeks. And of course, the XBOX continues to come in dead last.

Now then, heres the rundown: