THE ANGEL OF DARKNESS ASSAULTS CHARTS
Copyright 2003 www.tombraiderchronicles.com

[ July 8th 2003 ]

Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness took the top spot in the UK sales charts this week, selling more copies in its first week than any other previous Tomb Raider title - while Sony's Eye Toy: Play made a solid start at number two. The strength of the Tomb Raider franchise was proved afresh by the success of Angel of Darkness, which has also become the fifth best selling PS2 title over one week of all time in the UK - despite repeated delays to the launch of the game, and a critical panning in the majority of reviews.

The success of Eye Toy: Play is a resounding vindication of Sony's decision to back the quirky title, which uses a webcam peripheral as a controller and features a selection of fun party-style games. Further titles based around the webcam control system are expected in future. Elsewhere in the chart, it was the week of the expansion pack, with the only new entries outside of the top two being expansions for popular PC titles - Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne from Vivendi, and Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of the Undrentide from Atari. Sony's SOCOM: US Navy SEALs continued to sell well, and is at number three this week - apparently unaffected by the news last week that cheat peripheral manufacturer Fire International has released cheats for the online game.

There was also an impressive showing for EA's James Bond 007: Nightfire, which climbed from number 40 to number 15 thanks to promotions being run by various retailers. The top selling Xbox title of the week was Microsoft's own Brute Force once again, which fell ten places to number 17 in the All-Formats chart - but still fared rather better than the GameCube best seller, Sonic Adventure DX Directors Cut, which doesn't even chart in the top 40.