US Charts: Gran Turismo 4 dominates for a second month

Sony's long awaited racing title Gran Turismo 4 was the best selling game in the USA for a second month running in March, while EA's Need for Speed Underground: Rivals was the top seller of the PSP launch line-up.

Gran Turismo 4 managed to clock up an impressive half million sales in its second month on sale, bringing its total US sales since launch to over 1.1 million units and placing it well ahead of any other titles in period.

The market overall saw a rise of 31.5 per cent year on year in software sales, which is well ahead of most expectations, and brings the overall growth for the leisure software industry this year so far to 15.3 per cent.

One of the biggest events of the month, of course, was the launch of the PlayStation Portable - which saw over a million units of PSP software being sold in March, with three titles breaking through the 100,000 unit mark.

Leading the field was Sony's own Twisted Metal: Head On, which was a few thousand units ahead of EA's Need for Speed Underground: Rivals, while another Sony title, Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade, also broke the 100,000 barrier.

Back in the main ranking, Electronic Arts took the rest of the top three, with MVP Baseball 2005 at number two - although its low average retail price of around $30 meant that dollar revenues from the game were low - and Fight Night Round 2 at number three.

Capcom's Devil May Cry 3 came in at number four, with over a quarter of a million unit sales, while Lucasarts' Star Wars: Republic Commando was the top-ranked Xbox title in the chart, in at number six.

Sony had another game in the top ten thanks to the arrival of the critically acclaimed God of War, which was at number seven with over 200,000 unit sales; given the strong performance of both God of War and Gran Turismo 4, it's no surprise that Sony was the biggest winner in terms of market share, taking second place behind EA for the month with a year on year gain of 4.4 per cent.

Despite the debut of the PlayStation Portable, Nintendo still had a decent month with the DS - or more specifically, with WarioWare Touched, which sold over 110,000 copies during the month to become the third biggest selling handheld game.

This month sees another busy few weeks for US retailers, with many of the big publishers releasing at least one major title into the marketplace. The Xbox is particularly busy, with Doom 3 (Activision), Jade Empire (Microsoft) and Unreal Championship 2 (Midway) and WWE Wrestlemania 21 (THQ) all appearing, while Midnight Club 3 DUB Edition (Take-Two) rolls out on both PS2 and Xbox, and Nintendo launches the next iteration in the Pokemon franchise - Pokemon Emerald - on GBA.