As part of an exhaustive feature over at Next-Gen.biz, Colin Campbell reports that while EA’s Sports titles continue to dominate the market, kids licences also continue to perform well, as increasingly the young female TV-based titles grow in popularity.

“Of non-licensed games, shooting and action (generally this means running around hurting people) are still tops,” says Campbell. “Platformers have been boosted by DS releases. RPGs are strong, but this sector does include action RPGs.”

Similarly, EA dominated in terms of publisher market share. “Microsoft and Sony are weaker than one would hope, while Western outfits like Midway, Eidos and Vivendi are coming through ahead of the likes of Sega, Capcom, Konami and Namco,” says the special report.

November proved to be the month with the highest sales, with October second and – rather surprisingly – March in third, which was boosted by a flurry of sports titles.

DS claims the honour of having had the most format exclusives in the top 100 sellers, with PS2 in second. “Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 offered a fair share of exclusives, though many are not shown on this chart. DS exclusives have a better chance of selling more than 200,000 copies; the number required to break into the 2006 list,” adds Campbell.