The market's a little slower than it was last week, which is not really surprising following last week’s half-term 99p PC Software retail promotions. Total software units sold were down 11% on last week, but value is only down 4% on last week – due to the cheap-as-chips PC games almost-give aways.

Electronic Arts' sublime first-person shooter BLACK and Codemasters' superlative all-round racer TOCA Race Driver 3 storm to the top of the All Formats charts as supplied by ChartTrack, taking numbers one and two respectively. Finally, it feels like the year is beginning. BLACK, by the way, is EA’s first all formats number one based on a new intellectual property since Dungeon Keeper, way back in 1997, which is good news, of sorts.

EA’s Need for Speed: Most Wanted hangs in there at the number three slot, whilst LucasArts' Star Wars: Empire at War on PC drops three places from two down to five.

It's a shame to see the innovative and beautiful-looking Shadow of the Colossus fall from the number one slot it occupied for one week only, the game dropping to number four this week. It seems that, even with all of Sony’s marketing might behind it, that it couldn’t hold on to the top slot for a second week running.

There is a somewhat depressing lesson for videogame publishers to learn here, we suppose, which is: ‘innovation is good provided it's backed by a multi-million pound marketing campaign, but massive guns and fast cars always win out in the end’.

On that slightly depressing note, let's have a look at what else is new in this week’s chart. Codemasters have the only other new entry in the top 40, with their PC massively multiplayer online Sci Fi/Fantasy shindig, Rising Force Online (RF Online) which debuts at number 18. Err, that's all folks.