Chart News: A Good Week for Handheld Movie Cash-Ins

The sun just keeps getting hotter and hotter and, conversely, as it gets swelteringly hot outside, the numbers of videogames sold drops off, with the only titles shooting up the All Formats chart as rendered by ChartTrack this week being school holiday movie tie-ins – particularly the PSP/DS/GBA version of THQ’s Cars, which drives right up the chart from number 16 to this week's number two, no doubt boosted by the extensive marketing of the movie, which opens on July 28.

Whilst Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories holds firm at the top of the chart for the fifth week running, Disney/Buena Vista’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (down one place from four to five) is also a solid selling PSP/GBA/DS movie tie-in title.

So it looks like ver kids (or more likely, ver parents) are stocking up on games for the lengthy summer hols they have ahead of them. The lucky beggars!

Of course, SPOnG would rather their parents were a little more informed and bought them all New Super Mario Bros. – which stands firm at number three this week – but that would involved living in a world where true quality outshone multi-million pound cross-media blanket marketing. i.e., a dream world, where Mario was king and there was no such concept as the ‘average videogame movie tie-in’.

Back to the chart, and Ubisoft’s own current movie cash cow, Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow is up six places to number four this week, riding high off the back of the ‘actually rather good fun’ movie sequel, and the release of the PC version last week. The PS2 version of the game also thankfully knocks Activision’s Over The Hedge off the top spot on the PS2 chart this week, with that title also dropping five places on the all formats chart down to number ten.

Elsewhere in the all formats top ten there’s nothing much new going on. 2K Games’ Prey, somewhat predictably, drops from number two last week to number seven this week – the summer holidays being a notoriously difficult time to release truly original games.

Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training hangs in at number six this week, whilst footy fans continue to buy Pro Evolution Soccer 5 (it's cheap!) and 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany (why?) which both drop one spot this week down to numbers eight and nine respectively.

In terms of new releases, Sierra’s Miami Vice: The Game is the highest new entry in the PSP chart this week, straight in at 11, but the title failed to make a dent on the All Formats top 40.