UK Xbox sales surge

The latest weekly sales figures for the UK from ChartTrack show that, for the week ended March 27, the Xbox came within 4,000 units of outselling the PlayStation 2. We're not at liberty to disclose any of the figures, but we can reveal that sales of the Xbox console were up a massive 65 percent over those for the previous week--a statistic that's being attributed to the arrivals of both the currently Xbox-exclusive Tom Clancy Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow and Microsoft's limited edition Crystal Xbox.

PlayStation 2 sales for the week ended March 27 were actually down slightly from the previous week, while the GameCube enjoyed a small increase in sales, no doubt aided by the release of Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. Nobody at Microsoft's UK home entertainment division was available for comment on the latest UK sales charts, since they're currently attending a worldwide conference in North America. They'll probably be feeling pretty good about last week's achievements, which are made all the more impressive by the fact that both Pandora Tomorrow and the Crystal Xbox had only been on sale for two days at the time the latest charts were compiled.