UK Charts: Modern Warfare 2 Nabs Christmas #1

The UK Christmas Software Charts are in, and anyone who placed bets on Modern Warfare 2 bagging the top spot will be making easy money, as Activision's current-day shooter gets a 3% sales increase to hang onto #1.

FIFA 10 makes one valiant push to topple the Call of Duty sequel, but instead EA's sports game has to settle for #2 – given that the company has had the Christmas top spot for 11 of the 25 years Chart-Track has been recording sales, we reckon they can deal with second place. If you're interested (as we certainly are, being a computer games museum and all), the company with the second-most number of Christmas #1's is Ocean, which had won it three times in 1988, 1989 and 1991.

Nintendo's casual titles have proven to be great Christmas present fodder, with both Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort coming in at places 3 and 4, respectively, while New Super Mario Bros. Wii hands on to 7th and long-tail seller Mario Kart Wii continues to do good things for the company at #9.

AssCreed 2 drops a couple of places to fifth from the casual shake-up, and Microsoft's racing simulation Forza Motorsport 3 is still clinging to the lower region of the charts. Mario and Sonic luge themselves forward a place, and the big shocker from last week – Ubisoft's Just Dance – falls to 10th but the fact it's even there is an admirable feat. Must be the Christmas spirit.

The highest climber of the week is James Cameron's Avatar, which didn't make the charts at #12 but still made a considerable leap from #29 to get there, thanks to a jump in sales of 129%.

All Formats Week 51 (last week in brackets)
(1) - 1 – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – Activision (+3%)
(5) - 2 – FIFA 10 – EA (+24%)
(4) - 3 – Wii Fit Plus – Nintendo (+9%)
(2) - 4 - Wii Sports Resort – Nintendo (+0%)
(3) - 5 – Assassin's Creed II – Ubisoft (-5%)
(7) - 6 – Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games – Sega (+13%)
(6) - 7 – New Super Mario Bros. Wii – Nintendo (-1%)
(9) - 8 – Forza Motorsport 3 – Microsoft (+11%)
(10) - 9 – Mario Kart Wii – Nintendo (+12%)
(8) - 10 – Just Dance – Ubisoft (-18%)