UK Charts: NFSU2 still on top as sales slow after Christmas

Electronic Arts' Need for Speed Underground 2 made it seven weeks at number one last week, with the street racing title retaining its crown despite a 60 per cent drop in week to week sales.

In fact, every title in the top 40 saw a drop in sales during the past week, as the Christmas rush finally slowed down, and even heavy discounting of certain titles at retail didn't have much effect on the market.

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas came in at number two in the top 40 yet again, while FIFA 2005 took the number three spot and VU Games' The Simpsons: Hit & Run climbed four places to number eight.

The only major new release of the week was Nintendo's Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure, but the GBA-link powered Cube title failed to appear in the top 40 despite debuting at number one in the GameCube chart.

This week is another quiet one for game launches in the UK, with Take Two publishing Sega's ESPN sports titles here; the NBA, NFL and NHL games (which will all be published on both PS2 and Xbox) have done well in the USA at their $19.99 price point, but seem unlikely to set the market in the UK on fire. Expect another week dominated by the Christmas blockbusters, with perhaps a little more action from discounted titles in the January sales.

Chart compiler Chart-Track has also announced a change to its charts service, which is effective from this week, with a number of major retailers being added to the panel including non-specialist high street outlets John Lewis, Sainsburys and Morrisons, and major online retailers Play.com and Simply Games.