UK Sales Chart, Week Ending October 9th

FIFA Football 2005 had a strong start in this week’s UK sales chart, even though its rank slipped slightly from last year. Although in sales terms FIFA Football and Madden NFL occupy similar positions in the UK and US respectively, FIFA is generally regarded as inferior to Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer (a.k.a. World Soccer Winning Eleven) series by many players. Yet Konami’s title usually lags well behind FIFA in sales. So the release of Konami's latest game in the series on 15th October will still be watched with interest by many. Fable is another newcomer to the chart. It has done extremely well to get so high in the chart with an Xbox-only release. There were some disappointing lauches as well: Nintendo must be aghast at the performance of the GameCube-only Pikmin 2, which entered the charts ranked at 32nd. Just as last week combined sales of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen (which are, as usual with the core Pokémon titles, functionally identical) would have placed the games at number one, this week they would also have eclipsed Fable – but not FIFA Football. The final new entry in the top ten is Tony Hawk’s Underground 2. Although it will probably not break records entering the charts at number seven, it will likely remain popular through the Christmas period and beyond (like its predecessors in the series).

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