Despite the UK being on lockdown and the PlayStation 5 still being a few days away, last week was an exceedingly busy one for the gaming industry due to arrival of the Xbox Series and the first PS5 launch titles.
GI.biz reports over 790,000 boxed games were sold, presumably resulting in a lot of busy delivery drivers.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla had a very impressive first week, beating Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War to the UK chart top spot. Valhalla doubled Odyssey’s launch week figures, seemingly being the game Xbox Series owners picked up alongside their console. A third-party title ended up being the Xbox Series’ best-selling launch game, in other words.
Incidentally, Watch Dogs: Legion (which fell to #10 during its second week on sale) is also proving popular with Xbox owners, with the Xbox iteration counting for the lion’s share of sales.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War settles for #2, with the PS4 version surprisingly being the biggest selling. Sales were down over Modern Warfare, but early signs suggest it had a record-breaking digital launch.
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales swung in at #3. The PS5 version bagged 71% of sales, making it the biggest-selling PS5 launch title. Demon’s Souls wasn’t far behind at #6. Sackboy: A Big Adventure made #13 while Godfall – published by Gearbox – claimed #16.
The multiformat Planet Coaster: Console Edition put in a strong showing too, entering at #17. Yakuza: Like A Dragon followed behind at #20. NBA 2K21 then re-entered at #31. We expected to see DIRT 5 recover after a sluggish start, but Codemasters’ brash racer has instead departed the top 40 entirely. Gears Tactics was another top 40 no-show.
Stepping away from next-gen, Just Dance 2021 is off to a strong start with launch sales exceeding last year’s edition. The Switch version was the biggest selling, unexpectedly.
Switch games mostly fill the blanks in the top ten, including Animal Crossing: New Horizons at #5, followed by Super Mario 3D All-Stars, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Minecraft at #7, #8 and #9. The belated Switch release of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered seemingly helped EA’s racer remains in the chart too. Sales were up over launch week, but even so, it clings in the chart at #40.