US Charts: Spider-Man 2 tops June sales ranking

Activision's Spider-Man 2 on PS2 was the best selling game in the USA during the month of June, according to the latest figures from NPD, while the Xbox version of the game was at number five in the chart.

THQ's Full Spectrum Warrior on Xbox followed narrowly behind Spider-Man 2, at number two, while Nintendo's multiplayer Cube title Legend of Zelda: Four Swords was at number three.

Atari's Driv3r had a somewhat disappointing US debut compared with its performance in other territories, coming in at number four on the PlayStation 2 with the Xbox version nowhere to be seen in the top ten ranking.

Vivendi Universal's Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay also had a solid month, coming in at number six ahead of Activision's Shrek 2 (PS2) at seven and EA's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (PS2), down to number eight.

Holding up the bottom of the chart, Microsoft's Halo continues to sell amazingly strongly at number nine, clocking up over 100,000 further sales during June (with over half a million units of the title sold in the USA so far this year), while EA's MVP Baseball 2004 was at number ten.

Figures for the full six months through to June, however, show that MVP Baseball 2005 (PS2) was the best selling game of the year to date, followed closely by another EA Sports title, NFL Street (PS2).

In fact, EA had three of the top five titles in the first half of the year, with Fight Night 2004 (PS2) taking fourth place; Nintendo and Microsoft took one place each of the remaining two, with Pokemon Colosseum (Cube) at number three and Halo (Xbox) at number five.

In terms of market figures, June saw a 17 per cent year on year growth in home console software sales, which translated as three per cent growth for the entire industry (once other sales such as handheld games, hardware and accessories are counted - with hardware in particular dragging the figure down due to recent price cuts).

For the year to date, console software sales are up 7 per cent in the US, while total industry sales - again dragged down by the console price cuts - are down 3 per cent.