DS racks up sales in Japan

The GameCube may be slumping, but Nintendo's DS is helping pick up the slack, according to the top 100 sales charts for the first half of fiscal year 2006 (March 28-October 4), as reported in the latest issue of Famitsu.

While the PlayStation 2 commanded more spots in the top 10 than any other system (5), and also claimed the top spot with Konami's World Soccer Winning Eleven 9 (884,130 units sold), four Nintendo-published DS games and a Sega Game Boy Advance game helped split the chart 50-50 between Nintendo's handhelds and the PS2.

Nintendogs took second place by selling 697,940 copies, followed closely by the surprise hit Nou o Kitaeru Otona no DS Training (615,074 units sold), a puzzle game intended to enhance brain activity in adults. Another brain-teasing DS game, Yawaraka Atama-Juku, ranked sixth (531,750 units sold), while the handheld's Shonen Jump-inspired anime battle royal Jump Super Stars sneaked in to the top 10 with 375,745 copies sold.

While the numbers look good for the DS and the PS2, those systems' respective homebound and handheld counterparts had disappointing showings. As for the rest of the top 100, the highest-ranking GameCube game, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, only made it to 20th place (194,775 units sold), while PSP offerings topped out at 35 with World Soccer Winning Eleven Ubiquitous Evolution (137,337 units sold).

Overall, the PS2 fielded the most entrants into the top 100, with 57 games, followed by 17 games for the DS, 12 GBA offerings, 8 PSP games, and a half-dozen GameCube releases. No Xbox or PSOne games managed to crack the top 100.