UK Charts: Market boosted massively as Pokemon storms UK retail
The first Game Boy Advance outings for the massive Pokemon franchise, Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire, have taken the two top spots in the UK sales charts and driven the market to its highest point since mid-March.
The first Game Boy Advance outings for the massive Pokemon franchise, Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire, have taken the two top spots in the UK sales charts and driven the market to its highest point since mid-March.
The success of the two GBA titles is not exactly unexpected, but it provides a vital boost for the Game Boy Advance platform in the UK - which has been suffering from poor software sales despite the successful launch of the GBA SP earlier this year.
The arrival of the two titles - which are expected to hold on to the top spots in the chart for several weeks - has pushed Sony's Eye Toy down to number three in the chart, although the webcam based game continues to top the PS2 sales chart, ahead of Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness at number four.
Unsurprisingly, nobody really wanted to release games alongside Pokemon, so the rest of the chart is quiet as the grave in terms of new releases, with the exception of two BBC Multimedia releases on GBA - Robot Wars: Extreme Destruction at number 20, and Ace Lightning at number 28.
EA's FIFA 2003 is the strongest climber of the week, jumping from number 32 up to number 13 thanks to a re-release on the budget labels of all three major consoles.
As we predicted last week, the Xbox and GameCube have an incredibly rough time of it - there's not a single title on either platform anywhere to be seen in the All-Formats top 40. The top ranked Xbox game is Brute Force, and the top ranked Cube game is Sonic Adventure DX Directors Cut, but neither of them makes the cut - although the venerable PSone manages several top 40 entries, and the GBA has a number of titles aside from the Pokemon juggernauts in the ranking.