As predicted last week, sales of the Xbox 360 exclusive Tales of Vesperia have helped the console to beat its next-gen rival, Sony's PlayStation 3 into third place in the Japanese market.

The game is all about 1960s Mods fighting Rockers having first driven to Brighton on Vespa scooters.

What, it isn't? It's an RPG that comes from Namco Tales studio under the guiding hand of Yoshito Higuchi and continues the GameCube's Tales of Symphonia epic playing of roles. It launched on August 7th.

So, what did this esoteric slice of Nipponese gaming exclusivity do for the 360? Quite simply it enabled it to sell 28,116 boxes compared with just 10,705 PS3s according to Ascii Media Works for the week ending August 10th.

In order to for universal balance to be retained, however, the Wii still had to outsell both its competitors. It did, with 41,044 of the 'faddish' consoles rolling off the shelves.

Good news for Microsoft then in a market where traditionally it has suffered.