Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Beats Call of Duty in the Race for Number 1 | UK Box Charts

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is the UK’s best-selling boxed game in one of the biggest launch weeks in video game history.

It did remarkably well, so well that it prevented Call of Duty from ranking No. 1 during its debut week for the first time in 13 years.

It’s a surprising result, even with Ubisoft’s Viking game on sale for a few days longer than Call of Duty (it launched on November 10, while Call of Duty arrived on November 13). However, this year is a very different gaming market due to COVID-19, with the majority of AAA game sales for Xbox and PlayStation being in digital form. As a result, we can’t say if Assassin’s Creed was the best-selling game of the week, only that it was the best-selling boxed game.

In fact, a statement from Anna Malmhake, MD of Activision Blizzard in EMEAA, said that Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War “set a new record as the highest first-day digital sales worldwide in franchise history. “. We’ll see how the game performed digitally in the UK later in the week, but we’re expecting good numbers.

In terms of physical sales, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla had a massive week, with launch sales more than double that of its predecessor, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. 42% of the game’s sales were made on PS4 and 18% on PS5, despite the latter machine not releasing in the UK until next week. The rest of the sales (40%) came with the Xbox version. The game was marketed alongside the new game consoles released this week, Xbox Series X and S. However, Ubisoft sold only one ‘Xbox’ SKU to cover all platforms, including Xbox One, which means it’s impossible to tell. exactly which Xbox platform the game was purchased for.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War fared less well than a boxed release, with launch sales dropping more than 64% compared to last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. We’ll get the full picture of the game’s performance once digital sales roll in, but it’s also worth noting the impact of Call of Duty: Warzone, the highly successful free-to-play game released in March of this year.

Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty, and the launch of two Xbox consoles would have made for a massive launch week on their own, but Sony also made its PS5 games available to customers this week (ahead of next week’s launch), and those games worked too. heavily on the charts.

The third best-selling game was the new Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the successor to the hit Marvel’s Spider-Man of 2018. Box sales for this new game are 56% lower than the original, though it’s worth noting. that Miles Morales is not being advertised as a full sequel to that game, but as a shorter spin-off (and again, we’ll have to consider the impact of digital sales).

However, it is billed as one of the big launch games for PlayStation 5, and 71% of its sales were for the new console (with 29% of sales on PS4). We’ll get a better picture of its debut performance once the PS5 launches in the UK next week.

Other PS5 games on the charts include Demon’s Souls at No. 6, Sackboy: A Big Adventure at No. 13, and Godfall at No. 16. Demon’s Souls and Godfall are only on PS5, while Sackboy saw 89% of sales. on the PS5 version, and the rest on PS4. Again, this is all just boxed game data.

There were also other new releases on the charts. Just Dance 2021 is ranked 11th, with the vast majority (89%) of unit sales on Nintendo Switch. The game has performed very well, with launch sales 133% higher than last year’s Just Dance 2020.

Yakuza: Like A Dragon is ranked 20th, with 65% of unit sales on PS4 and 35% on Xbox. Finally, Planet Coaster: Console Edition comes in at 17th place. Surprisingly, the game sold almost exactly the same number of copies on PS4, Xbox, and PS5.

Elsewhere, NBA 2K21 re-enters the chart at No. 31 thanks to the PS5 and Xbox Series versions of the game (sales are up 185% week-over-week). The PS5 edition accounted for 63% of sales, with 14% on Xbox series devices. In fact, there were three Xbox series specific releases, Call of Duty (the best-selling Xbox series exclusive game), NBA 2K21 (# 2), and Deep Silver’s Maneater (# 3).

Elsewhere, FIFA 21 drops from No. 1 to No. 4 after a 24% drop in sales week-over-week, there is currently no version of the game for the new consoles.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons on Switch drops to No. 5 after a slight 7% drop. And Super Mario 3D All-Stars drops one spot to number 7, despite the game’s sales increasing 40% week over week. Nintendo has started a new television marketing campaign in the UK for the Mario collection.

Watch Dogs: Legion drops from 2nd to 10th due to a 36% drop in sales week over week. The game is enhanced on Xbox series machines, and this week 57% of sales were from the Xbox SKU.

Last week’s new highest release, LOL Surprise! Remix: We Rule the World drops from No. 10 to 35 after a 54% drop in sales. Meanwhile, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit – Remastered drops from 35th to 40th, despite the late arrival of the Nintendo Switch edition. Sales of EA’s racing game increased 1% week over week. Codemasters’ Dirt 5, which also launched last week, has fallen out of the Top 40 entirely.

Overall, over 790,000 boxed games were sold in the UK last week, an increase of 96% week over week. They generated £ 36.4 million in UK retail, representing a 165% increase on a weekly basis. Even though the console is yet to come out, PS5 games accounted for almost 19% of all games sold and almost 25% of revenue.

Here’s GfK’s Top Ten for the week ending November 14: