Christopher Dring Head of Games B2B Monday 20th November 2017 Share this article Share

Star Wars Battlefront II's Week One boxed sales in the UK were significantly lower than anticipated.

UK retailers told GamesIndustry.biz last month that the new Star Wars game will sell more than Battlefield 1.

However, first week sales are more than 50% down compared with last year's shooter. The boxed sales figures are also down 61% compared with 2015's Star Wars Battlefront.

The disappointing sales follows controversy and anger related to the game's microtransaction model, which EA pulled from the game last minute. It's unclear how much that debacle will have impacted first week sales, although the comparisons are inevitable.

Digital will have made up for some of that drop-off (based on the performance of other games this year). Although, based on EA's digital figures, that won't be enough to make up for the shortfall

55% of Battlefront II's sales were on PS4, 44% on Xbox One and 1% on PC (PC is a primarily digital market).

As a result, Battlefront II only made No.2 (in units, it did make No.1 in terms of revenue). It failed to knock Call of Duty: WWII off its perch, which is still performing very well and is about to hit a major sales milestone after just three weeks. Indeed, it took last year's Infinite Warfare 7 weeks to achieved what WWII has done in just three.

The other big games this week were the updated versions of last year's Pokémon 3DS games - Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.

It's difficult to compare these 3DS games to last year's titles, because they're more extensive updates than entirely original products. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon's sales are 74% lower than last year's titles. Perhaps a fairer comparison is with 2012's Black and White 2, which were sequels to a previous game, released on ageing hardware (back then, the DS). In comparison to those products, Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon sales are up 32.4%. Of course, digital has grown significantly since then, and this only factors in physical sales.

Ultra Sun sold more than Ultra Moon, with the two games making No.4 and No.5 respectively. If sales had been combined, the titles would have been the third best-selling game of the week.

Other new releases this week includes The Sims 4, making its debut at No.7 on PS4 and Xbox One. LA Noire is back at No.8. The remastered version sold best on PS4 (51% of sales), followed by Xbox One (28%) and then Nintendo Switch (20%).

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 makes a debut just inside the Top Ten at No.10, but expect that game to hang around for months and months.

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim VR on PS4 is at No.19, while the Switch version debuts at No.26.

Here's the UKIE/GfK Top Ten for the week ending November 18th: