DS sales break 5 million while Animal Crossing and Brain Training each break the million mark during the week ending December 25th.

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

As reported earlier in the week, Nintendo of Japan held a press conference announcing that their dual-screened baby had already surpassed 5 million in sales in less than 13 months. Move over Gameboy Advance and step aside PS2. The DS is now Japan's fastest selling game system of all time, with Chistmas week adding fuel to its raging fire to the tune of nearly 600k more units sold. Each successive week has seen these numbers blow the previous week's figure out of the water and this total likely represents the most impressive non-launch week for any game system in Japan...and in fact even exceeds the DS' own launch (about 460k).

But wait, theres more.

The week going through New Years is also considered a heavy spending period, in fact likely the biggest in Japan (where New Year celebrations outstrip Christmas by far)...though whether scarcity will crop up to be an issue remains to be seen as many shops are struggling to meet the colossal demand.

Other platforms put in strong retail performances as well, overshadowed as they were. The PSP itself reached over 160k users in outdrawing the ever-steady PS2 with its roughly 100k. The GC and GBA (its many forms combined) both finished admirably, though Microsoft systems continued to languish as the only platforms that saw sales decrease from previous weeks. Perhaps Japanese gamers await confirmation that the 360 will indeed have content aimed at them (DOA 4, anyone?).

The week's console numbers follow:

As the hardware figures adequately support, content is ultimately King with an impressive software sell-through ratio to back up all those new DS systems. Clearly, Animal Crossing: Wild World was the most popular companion for a new DS, with Mario Kart DS also selling very impressively. It didn't end there as fully half of the top 10 and half of the top 20 (11 of 20 if you count combined Nintendogs sales reportedly over 100k) were DS titles. The week ended up crowning two new million sellers: the aforementioned Animal Crossing cemented its new smash hit status by hitting the million mark in roughly one month of availability, while the ever-steady Brain Training for Adults predictably followed it across the milestone threshold. Again, Supply may be the greatest enemy for all this Demand...alongside reported DS shortages, Animal Crossing is proving increasingly hard to find.

Despite the balanced attack of DS software on the charts, the eagerly anticipated Kingdom Hearts 2 for the PS2 did not fail in leading all titles with an impressive debut week. Gamecube and GBA managed to make their presence in the Top 10 known as well, with Mario Party 7 and Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon, respectively. Overall, the week was so strong that nearly every title in the Top 10 was in six figures (with Brain Training narrowly missing that mark).

Weekly software numbers follow: