The latest sales charts for the week ending Sept 4th. Now how did Japan's favourite new portable fare this week...

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

Overall sales for the period saw a huge dropoff from previous weeks, likely due to the annual end of summer shift and a dearth of compelling new software offerings. In fact, the only new title to make it into the top 10 was the latest Bleach (anime) game for the PSP. Nintendo continued to be held up in the charts on the strength of their handhelds, with their brain-centric "non-games" again exhibiting impressive staying power. Word of mouth must really be fueling the success of these simple and intuitive titles, each of which is steadily approaching the 500k mark in total units sold. As if it hasn't been said before, these "games" are quite the phenomenon. It will be fascinating to observe their popularity once the localized versions hit the western markets.

Also maintaining their chart residence was Jump Super Stars and Sega's hit Mushiking. It should be noted that Sega has recently announced that they are hard at work on a DS version of the beetle-battler, with a target release date in December. Wonder if it will utilize Nintendo WiFi Connection? Nothing is for sure yet, but you can bet it will only serve to reinforce the obviously monstrous following the series has garnered. As for whether the series will make it out of Japan, it should be noted that toy maker Hasbro intends to release the original collectible card-based form of the game in the U.S. If the experiment proves successful, the west may very well see the genesis of their own Mushiking craze. Now back to the numbers:

On the hardware side... well, in recent months the DS hasn't needed any significant new releases to sell a healthy amount. Nothing has changed as sales actually increased a bit from last week despite no significant new software. Here is hoping that many of these new DS owners are buying up quality recent releases like Konami's Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow and Lost in Blue... but more likely they are purchasing Brain Training for Adults. New customers and new markets indeed.

Meanwhile, the GBA Micro is just about to land...Here are the figures for this week: