UK Sales Chart, Week Ending April 30th

After being denied the number one spot last week by the narrowest of margins, Eidos/Giant’s Lego Star Wars has usurped Rockstar’s Midnight Club 3, thanks to an 18 percent increase in sales. The game is the most successful Lego title ever in the UK, and will offer some stiff competition to the official Episode III game, due out next week. British publisher Jester Interactive are also celebrating a best-ever performance, with the entry of PlayStation 2 exclusive motorbike simulator TT Superbikes at number five. The entry of massively multiplayer online role-playing game Guild Wars at number eight will also be greeted with celebration at NCsoft, and shows the increasing acceptance in the UK market of online-only games, following in the wake of World of WarCraft’s breakthrough success. Elsewhere in the charts, the GameCube-only Star Fox: Assault has had a surprisingly high entry, considering its largely negative reviews, at number twenty-three. Stock problems continue with GameCube title Resident Evil 4, though, with some stores now charging up to £50 ($95) for the hard-to-obtain game. The only other new entries in the top forty are Take-Two’s Close Combat: First to Fight at number twenty-eight, and Vivendi’s Empire Earth II at number thirty. The only notable absentee from the chart is Capcom’s newly released Haunting Ground, which has failed to appear anywhere in the top forty.

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