Electronic Arts' Fight Night 2004 was the top selling game in the USA for the month of April for a significant margin, with strong performances also for Midway's NBA Ballers and Nintendo's Pokemon Colosseum.

The PS2 version of Fight Night took the top spot by a significant margin, and the game also topped the Xbox chart - with the Xbox version coming in at number three in the overall ranking.

Midway's NBA Ballers on PS2 took the number two place for the month, while EA's MVP Baseball 2004 (PS2) was at number four - with only Nintendo's Pokemon Colosseum (GC) at number five preventing the top five from being entirely sports-dominated.

Capcom's Resident Evil: Outbreak made a strong showing for the company, with the PS2 exclusive online title charting at number six, while Ubisoft's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow was at number seven. The other big release for the month, Eidos' Hitman Contracts, was at number ten on PS2 and number 11 on Xbox, with about 55 per cent of the title's sales recorded on PS2 as against 45 per cent on Xbox.

In hardware terms, the Xbox recorded a landmark month - becoming the best selling console in the US for the first time since its launch, with sales up 50 per cent over the previous month thanks to the price cut which came into effect at the end of March. This is great news. I am sure that the Halo SE Xbox helped.

The console even outsold the Game Boy Advance slightly, with the GBA seeing a 41 per cent decline in sales - which was also mirrored by the GameCube, which dipped under 100,000 units sold for the first time this year. Sales of the PS2 dropped by 36 per cent during the month, although that is expected to be reversed this month thanks to the price cut announced at E3.

Source: gamesindustry.biz "