Final Fantasy VII breaks all records

Final Fantasy VII, a role-playing game for the Playstation, has broken all sales records after selling over 48,000 copies in the UK in just three days.

The game took more than 100 programmers two years to write. It has over 70 hours of gameplay spread over three CDs and is closer to an interactive manga film than a computer game.

Bart Saunt, senior product manager for games and multimedia at Virgin, said: 'This is the first game of this type to reach a large number of people. It has certainly attracted attention from a large number of customers who are not usually interested in computer games, probably as a result of the media coverage it has received. Without doubt though, it is a great game.'

Richard Gandy, purchasing director at Network Computer Buying Group, said he was delighted with sales of the game. 'We don't normally carry a lot of Playstation games, but we have sold out of this one twice already - it is the biggest order for a single item we have ever made,' he said.

But Gandy did not agree that Final Fantasy VII was attracting a large number of different customers, pointing out that many of the games had been pre-ordered over the past few weeks.

The game broke all sales records in the US, where it sold 500,000 copies in three weeks. Japan managed to sell two million copies in only three days.

In the UK it looks set to exploit the hole left at the top of the UK games market by the absence of F1 97 and the late release of Tomb Raider 2.

Final Fantasy has gained a cult following in Japan since the original video game was made in 1972, and this instalment looks set to bring the mania to the UK.

Sega's pre-tax profits have fallen by five per cent to $95.5million and sales fell by 28 per cent in the six months ended 30 September.