UK Charts: FIFA Street dislodges GT4
New releases perform well in the top ten as FIFA Street climbs to pole position.
Electronic Arts' latest spin on the football genre, FIFA Street, has swapped places with Sony's Gran Turismo 4 at the top of the UK sales chart, knocking the eagerly awaited racing title from its perch after a fortnight at number one.
Gran Turismo 4 continues to be the best selling game on the PS2, but FIFA Street's cross-platform appeal saw it passing out Polyphony Digital's latest opus in the third week on sale for both titles.
Meanwhille, Ubisoft's latest title, Brothers in Arms, holds firm at number three this week, suggesting that the French publisher may indeed have the makings of a successful new war franchise on its hands.
It's followed closely by a pair of new entries which both performed strongly in the top ten in Easter week, namely EA's Free Radical Design developed title TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, and Capcom's Devil May Cry 3, at numbers four and five respectively.
Only one other new release breaks the top 20 this week, with THQ's ultra violent movie tie-in The Punisher coming in at number 14, while the rest of the top ten sees last week's titles shuffling places for the most part - with EA Sports' Rugby 2005 the highest climber, up four places to number six.
Capcom's Resident Evil 4 drops a huge 14 places this week, down from number five to number 19 - a disappointing showing for the title, which was an incredible success in the USA when it launched in January, but not an unexpected one given the weak sales of GameCube in the UK.
Staying with Nintendo, Super Mario 64 DS is the last of the launch titles for the Nintendo DS to remain in the top ten, dropping one place to this week's number nine. Retailers will undoubtedly be watching the performance of the company's next few launches for the platform with interest, as they should provide a solid indicator of the short to medium term prospects for the handheld.
The school half-term break continues here in the UK, so this week should be a busy one for game retailers - and Friday sees the start of the second quarter, bringing with a number of major releases.
Leading the pack is Ubisoft's latest Splinter Cell title, Chaos Theory, which rolls out simultaneously on Xbox, PS2, PC and Cube, and should make a major impact on the charts, while Vivendi publishes Majesco's promising science fiction title Advent Rising on Xbox and PC, Capcom brings us cult favourite Viewtiful Joe 2 on PS2 and Cube, and there's yet another Japanese RPG for Cube owners, namely Namco's Baten Kaitos.