US Charts: Midnight Club 3 on top for April as sales rise 9 per cent

Take Two's Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition was the best-selling game in the United States for April, according to the latest charts from NPD - while the Xbox edition of Doom 3 came in at number two.

Midnight Club 3 sold almost 400,000 units across PS2 and Xbox combined during the month, while Doom 3 - which was ranked separately for the Collector's Edition (No.2) and the regular edition (No.4) - managed around 385,000 units in total.

Software sales overall were up by some nine per cent year on year, bringing total sales for the month to $342 million - but this is still quite short of the $400 million target set by some analysts, such as Wedbush Morgan Securities' Michael Pachter, who described the figures as "much lower than our expectations, with fewer units sold for new and recently released games, and flat catalog sales."

However, Pachter did note that Take Two's performance had exceeded his expectations, although Electronic Arts, Midway, Atari and THQ all fell short of his sales predictions for the month.

Other titles which fared well alongside Midnight Club 3 and Doom 3 were Sony's God of War, which added to last month's impressive performance with a number three ranking and a further 182,000 units sold, and Ubisoft's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which came in at number five.

Further down the chart, the Eidos-published LEGO Star Wars came in at number eight, following on from its chart-topping performance in the United Kingdom last month.

The biggest boost to the market, however, was provided by the handheld sector. Although no handheld game made it into the top ten, software sales in the sector were up by 79 per cent year on year thanks to the success of the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.