Gran Turismo 4 Dominates U.S. Sales In February

Sony's racing game sequel Gran Turismo 4 has matched its success in Europe, by charting as the best selling console game in the U.S. during February, with over 600,000 units sold. The secon- highest selling game of the month was the PlayStation 2 version of NBA Street V3, with the Xbox version at number five. Taking into account the GameCube version as well, all three titles sold over 400,000 units – impressive, but still 200,000 behind the single-format Gran Turismo 4. Third place in the chart was taken by Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but fourth place went to yet another EA Sports title, in the form of the PlayStation 2 version of MVP Baseball 2005. Indeed, EA have four sports titles in the top ten, with Madden NFL 2005 at number nine. Number six in the charts when to the PlayStation 2 version of Mercenaries, with the Xbox version at number ten. Number seven in the chart was Resident Evil 4, which has also continued to perform well since its debut last month, and seems to have avoided the relative apathy towards the title seen in Japan. The only new entry in the chart, besides Gran Turismo 4, is EverQuest spin-off and Champions of Norrath sequel Champions: Return to Arms – which sold a very reasonable 100,000 units. Overall, though, February has been dominated by Sony’s racing sequel, with a relative lack of major releases. This should stand in stark contrast to March which, apart from anything, will see the launch of the PSP in North America.