Soccer Beats Zelda And Orange Box In UK Charts

A busy week of new releases has seen considerable movement in the UK charts, with new entries for the top three lead by Sega and Sports Interactive’s Football Manager 2008 on PC. The complex management title, which features virtually no moving graphics, accounted for 38 percent of all PC games sold during the week. Its sales are, within a margin of 2,000 units, identical to those for both the 2006 and 2007 editions – the latter of which also resulted in Sega’s last number one in the UK. After abandoning the Championship Manager series they created for Eidos Interactive, Sports Interactive now seems to have successfully migrated the majority of their fans to the new franchise. As such, seven out of the top ten biggest launch weeks for PC games in the UK are for one or other of the series. The only other titles in the top ten are World of WarCraft: Burning Crusade, The Sims 2 and Half-Life 2. Football Manager 2008 also tops the combined multiformat charts, but the second placed title in terms of individual sales is The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass – one of ten Nintendo DS titles in the top forty. With another eleven Wii games, Nintendo format titles account for over 50 percent of the top UK forty this week. The third new entry in the top ten is The Orange Box for the Xbox 360, containing Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. The Xbox 360 version accounted for 77 percent of all sales for the title, with the PC version entering the charts only at number seventeen. The highest new entry outside of the top ten is Disney’s High School Musical: Makin' The Cut! For the Nintendo DS at number fifteen. Take-Two’s Carnival Funfair Games for Wii enters at number twenty-four, while the Wii version of Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis debuts at number thirty-seven. Following an increase in hardware stock, Wii sales continue to show brisk business, with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess re-entering the charts at number thirty-three. PlayStation 3 sales also continue to be buoyant, following the price cuts and introduction of the 40GB model last week. As a result there are six PS3 titles in the top forty this week, beating the Xbox 360 total of five.

Leisure software charts compiled by Chart Track, (C)2007. ELSPA Ltd