Australia Sales Chart, Week Ending March 5

As more and more new games are released into the Australian market, the same titles that had hung on since Christmas are being swept off the charts. Gone are the peripheral-based games like Buzz: The Music Quiz, EyeToy: Play 3, and SingStar 80s, as well as WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw and Ricky Ponting International Cricket 05. The #1 game for nearly two straight months, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, is now down to #7; things are beginning to change. The new king of the charts is Atari's V8 Supercars, which sees both the PS2 and Xbox versions on the charts. At #1 and #4 respectively, they bracket the PS2 and Xbox versions of EA's Black, which debuts in Australia at #2 and #3 this week. It's generally a good week for EA, as the company published the other new face on the charts -- The Sims 2: Open for Business at #5 -- and adds Rugby 2006 to account for half the chart. Non-EA publishers are represented by Lucasarts, whose Star Wars: Empire at War RTS continues to do well on PC at #6; Vivendi, whose World of WarCraft is selling as strongly in Australia as in the rest of the globe at #9; and Rockstar, whose Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories manages to hang on by its fingernails at #10 against the tide of new games pushing out other old favorites.

Official Australia Interactive Games Charts (c) GfK Group