UK Charts: Physical Call of Duty launch sales lowest in 11 years But it's the biggest digital launch in Activision's history

Christopher Dring Head of Games B2B Sunday 14th October 2018 Share this article Share

First weekend UK boxed sales of Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII are down almost 50% compared with last year's Call of Duty: WWII.

The sales are also down 59% compared with its direct predecessor, 2015's Black Ops III.

It's the weakest start for a boxed Call of Duty game since 2007's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

These figures only include physical units, so do not factor in sales of digital downloads - which have been increasing significantly in recent years. Indeed, Activision has since revealed that Black Ops IIII is its biggest digital day one launch ever, and that on day one 'the total number of people who connected online to play Black Ops 4 increased from last year's release'.

Even without digital, Black Ops IIII was still the second biggest boxed launch of the year (behind FIFA 19) and sold well enough to top the charts.

It's also the earliest launch for a Call of Duty for over two console generations - the game usually arrives in early or mid-November. Therefore there is still several weeks for the game to improve its performance.

58% of sales were on PS4, with 41% coming on Xbox One. The remainder was for the PC SKU.

Regardless, coupled with a 25% decline in boxed launch sales of FIFA 19, Q4 hasn't got off to a strong start for games retail.

There are still several big launches to come, with Battlefield V, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Fallout 76.

There was another new release this week in the form of WWE 2K18. The game debuts at No.3, but didn't fare much better than Call of Duty. Physical sales are down 37.5% year-on-year. 66% of sales came from the PS4 version, with the rest coming on Xbox One.

Last week's big games are forced to make way for the new releases. Assassin's Creed Odyssey drops 54% week-on-week and falls to No.3, whereas Forza Horizon 4 drops from No.3 to No.5 with a 67% sales drop week-on-week.

Meanwhile, Super Mario Party for Nintendo Switch falls to No.7 with a 45% drop in sales.

There was one other new release to make the charts this week: The World Ends With You: Final Remix for Nintendo Switch, which debuts at No.21.

Here is the UKIE/GfK Top 10 for week ending October 13th.