UK Sales Chart, Week Ending April 16th

FIFA Street has now managed to stay at the top of the UK sales chart for the fourth consecutive week, fighting back competition from titles that have received significantly more positive critical appraisal. These include Rockstar’s Midnight Club 3, which has entered the charts at number two this week. World Championship Snooker, entering the charts at number eight, would at one time have seemed an atypical release for Sega, but can now be seen to fit in well with the company’s stated goal of publishing titles specifically for the European market. World of WarCraft’s re-entry into the charts, after an additional 250,000 copies were made available in Europe, is also of note. This is especially true since both the PC and online markets are weaker in the UK than on the continent and in the U.S., many analysts claim. The highest new entry outside of the top ten this week is Predator: Concrete Jungle at number eleven – a fairly high placing for a title that has received virtually no press attention and for which press review code has not been made generally available. Tekken spin-off Death by Degrees has suffered from a similar mysterious press black-out, but oddly, it has failed to penetrate even the top forty this week. The only other new entries this week are the Sega-published The Matrix Online at number twenty-one and hardcore PC strategy game Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars at number twenty-six.

Official UK Leisure Software Charts (c) ELSPA compiled by Chart-Track