The DS continues to carry the Japanese market in the week ending March 25th!

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

Software sales for the week rebounded appreciably, up 47% from the previous week. By and large, Nintendo DS software continued to carry the Japanese market with 22 out of the top 30 residing on the dual-screened portable. Yoshi's Island DS continued its strong sales, as did a handful of other familiar names such as Professor Layton (still lacking a release announcement outside of Japan) and New Super Mario Bros.

For the Wii, despite high console sales, the software situation has become interesting. Week after week the family-friendly titles Wii Sports and Wii Play are the only games for that platform that show consistently strong sales. While this is most certainly due to the dearth of quality original content for the "hardcore gamer" set, hopefully recent announcements such as Sega's NiGHTS sequel will spur the interest of more established gamers. The Wii, as much as if not more than the DS, is exploring new consumer territory. In two years will the system's highest selling title be a game like the impressive-looking Super Mario Galaxy or "new-generation" software such as a "Fitness Trainer" or Brain Age?

On the hardware side, per usual, the DS Lite continued to dominate sales like no other platform before it. By mid-April it is probable that Japan's favorite gaming system will surpass 16 million units sold since launch. Year-to-date, its closest competitor in terms of overall sales is the Wii. Even here, DS Lite sales have almost doubled its console cousin (1.8 million and 990k, respectively).

The weekly software numbers follow:

The week's console numbers follow: