The bad news continues for the troubled Japanese games industry with new stats from Famitsu-owning Enterbrain showing that the total value of the region’s games market is down 24.4 per cent year-on-year for the period between December 29th and June 28th.

A slump in hardware sales of 27.6 per cent is the chief offender, though software sales were also down sharply at 21.8 per cent.

Nintendo’s DS was the best selling machine, shifting 1.62m units. PSP came second with sales of 1.18m.

In the home console race, Wii lead the charge with sales of 640,000 units followed by PS3 (550,000) and Xbox 360 (210,000).

Total market value reached YEN 218bn (around £1.4bn).

The numbers are far starker than those seen in the UK, where H1 2009 was down 5.7 per cent year-on-year.

Much like across the rest of the global games industry, 2009 has so far failed to produce the triple-A big-hitters that injected life into the same period in 2008. However, H2 will bring with it the likes of Wii Sports Resort, the new Dragon Quest, Monster Hunter 3 and, of course, Final Fantasy XIII.