The Charts: Need for Speed at Number One

Sales dropped off considerably this week, as the kids go back to school after the autumn half-term game-buying blitz. The UK’s games industry has now gone into pre-Xmas lockdown mode, with its full focus now on shifting as many of those stocking-filling units (ie games!) as is physically possible.

EA is gunning for this year’s Xmas number one, with the latest iteration in its racing blockbuster series, Need for Speed: Carbon revving its engines and cruising straight to the top of the All Formats chart. It is edging slightly ahead of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 6, which drops back to Number 2 (selling only a 1,000 copies less than Carbon).

EA now has three games in the Top 4, with FIFA 07 dropping one place to Number 3 and The Sims 2: Pets also falling down one place to Number 4.

Rockstar's superlative schoolboy caper, Canis Canem Edit holds firm at Number 5 this week, while the company’s highly anticipated PSP title Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories debuts at Number 6. The ‘80s handheld dream that is Vice City Stories is bound to boost pre-Xmas PSP sales in the coming months.

Titles dropping down the Top 10 this week include Sega’s Football Manager 2007 which falls from Number 4 to 7, Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent, slipping two places down to 8 and Vivendi’s Scarface: The World is Yours which falls three places down to Number 10.

The only new entry in the Top 10 this week is THQ's PC expansion pack Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, which shoots straight in at Number 9.

In terms of other new entries this week, Atari's Neverwinter Nights 2 is in at 14, Activision's Marvel Ultimate Alliance is in at 24 and, finally, Atari's Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenaichi is at 29.