UK CHARTS: Ashes bowls to the top

The reign of Wii Sports Resort has ground to a halt earlier than expected at the top of the ELSPA GfK-ChartTrack All Formats Top 40 with Codemasters’ Ashes 2009 stumping Nintendo’s title after its first weekend of release.

In doing so Codemasters becomes the first UK publisher to claim the top spot since Eidos did so in week six 2007 with flight sim Battlestations Midway.

Ashes 2009 becomes Codemasters’ first number one since Brian Lara International Cricket 2005, though the new title outsold the former by a factor of three, becoming the biggest cricket launch title in UK chart history.

Wii Sports Resort manages to hold on to second place despite a 49 per cent drop in sales. Ubisoft’s Call of Juarez does well to recoup three places, capturing seventh position.

Also upwardly mobile are Mario Kart Wii (up three places to eighth) and Disney’s G-Force, which jumps from 26th to ninth following the cinema release of the film.

Here’s the ELSPA GfK-ChartTrack All Formats Top 10 in full (for the week ending August 8th):
1. Ashes Cricket 2009 (Codemasters)
2. Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo)
3. Wii Fit (Nintendo)
4. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (EA)
5. Fight Night Round 4 (EA)
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (EA)
7. Call of Juarez (Ubisoft)
8. Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo)
9. G-Force (Disney)
10. The Sims 3 (EA)