USA Chart: Madden dominates August sales, but ESPN NFL makes gains

It was the battle of the NFL titles in the USA last month, as both EA and Sega/Take Two released annual updates to their American Football titles - and while Madden came out a clear winner, Sega's title made up significant ground.

The PS2 version of Madden took the top spot in the chart, selling over a million units in the process - and factoring in sales of the Collector's Edition of the game, which retailed at a premium price point of $59, brings the total PS2 sales to over 1.5 million.

The Xbox version of the game takes second place, with over half a million units sold, while the GameCube version scrapes in at the bottom of the ranking - taking tenth place with under 100,000 units sold.

In contrast, ESPN NFL 2k5, which was released at a budget price point by Take Two under its new sports title deal with Sega, came in at number three on the PS2 with under half a million sales, and at number five on Xbox with just over 300,000 sales.

In total, Madden outsold ESPN NFL by a factor of 166 per cent, and the EA Sports title actually increased its unit sales on a year on year basis - but Sega and Take Two are unlikely to be disappointed with the performance of their title.

In the same race last year, Madden outsold ESPN by 841 per cent, so the ESPN game has actually made up significant ground against its rival since the Take Two distribution deal - and the budget price point - were applied to the Sega sports range.

Elsewhere in the chart, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Black Arrow is in sixth place for Ubisoft, with healthy sales of the title being driven largely by its popularity on the Xbox Live service.

The remaining three titles in the ranking are all familiar faces - Spider-Man 2 (PS2) is at number seven, last month's number one NCAA Football 2005 (PS2) is at eight, and still flitting around the lower reaches of the top ten, Microsoft's Halo (Xbox) is at number nine, selling close to 100,000 units once again this month.