A little Grand Theft Auto in San Andreas proves a popular activity for the week ending January 28th.

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

On the software front, the delayed release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was the headliner. While GTA easily outsold the prolific DS offerings, a handful of DS titles proved solid in their debut. This includes Sangokushi Taisen (a card-centered take on Romance of the Three Kingdoms), Picross DS (a puzzle game based off the addictive original Gameboy design) and Hotel Dusk (an adventure/mystery-novel noir from the makers of Trace memory). Additionally, another strong week for Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker pushed the title platinum. The DS continues to churn out the hits.

Not much changed on the hardware front - DS Lite, Wii, PSP. This will likely remain the pecking order for much of the season. The biggest mystery and X-factor is the Playstation 3. Are these weak sales indicative of a console whose price and unimpressive offerings are largely alienating Japanese gamers? Or is Sony still in the throes of manufacturing woes? Though it is a given that the PS3 will pick up eventually, Sony must certainly be troubled with the loss of a number of once-exclusive titles such as Virtua Fighter 5.

The weekly software numbers follow:

The week's console numbers follow: