Christopher Dring Head of Games B2B Monday 30th October 2017 Share this article Share

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Assassin's Creed Origins is the best-selling boxed game in the UK charts this week.

It was a busy weekend for entertainment, with three major game launches, alongside the movie Thor: Ragnarok and the second season of Stranger Things. The Thor movie raked in $108m in the international Box Office (which includes the UK), making it one of the biggest October openings

Assassin's Creed Origins' performance won't allay fears over the strength of the franchise, at least not in the UK. The game's opening sales were ever-so-slightly down over 2015's Assassin's Creed Syndicate, which was a disappointing launch for Ubisoft. Of course, these figures don't factor in download sales, and anecdotal reports from publishers state that digital downloading of AAA games has significantly increased in 2017.

There were some positives. The higher selling price of Origins (due to the special Golds and Gods editions) means that the game did surpass Syndicate's week one revenue total, and the game's opening sales are better than what Watch Dogs 2 managed last year.

PS4 accounted for 60% of Origins' sales, with Xbox One accounting for the rest.

The real star of the week was Nintendo's Super Mario Odyssey, which only narrowly lost out to Origins in second place. In fact, if we focus on individual formats, Super Mario Odyssey was No.1, beating Assassin's Creed on PS4.

Odyssey is the biggest Switch launch of the year, surpassing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In fact, its first week boxed sales are stronger than any Wii U title's debut, too. The game also resulted in a 64% increase in Switch hardware sales week-on-week, which means the machine has now passed 300,000 console sales in the UK (sales figures supplied from retailers). Also, note that sales from the online UK Nintendo Store are not counted in these figures, so these numbers will have been higher than reported.

The new launches has caused FIFA 18 to slip to No.3 (sales down 11% week-on-week), while last week's No.1 Gran Turismo Sport drops to No.5 with a 61% decrease in sales week-on-week.

The other big boxed release this week was Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus from Bethesda. This looks like another disappointing result for the publisher, which has had a number of difficult launches in the past 12 months. Wolfenstein II's week one sales are 60% lower than what it predecessor managed in 2014, although that game did arrive on more platforms (360 and PS3), and then there's the expected increase in downloading to consider, too. Again, PS4 accounted for 60% of Wolfenstein II sales, whereas Xbox One made up 34% of the total (the rest coming on PC).

The arrival of Destiny 2 on PC means that Activision's game increased 117% in sales week-on-week, but the title remains at No.7. Discounting on GTA V sees that game rise from No.8 to No.6 (sales up 129%), while South Park: The Fractured But Whole falls from No.3 to No.8 with a 71% drop in sales week-on-week.

Another of last week's new games, WWE 2K18, falls from No.4 to No.10, after a 75% decrease in sales week-on-week.

Meanwhile, Just Dance 2018 came out last week (No.23), with the majority of sales coming on the 11-year-old Nintendo Wii (32% of sales). The second most popular platform was Switch (31% of sales).

Over 600,000 boxed games were sold in the UK last week, and expect that to rise over the next seven days with the launch of Call of Duty: WWII.

Here is the GFK/UKIE Top Ten For The Week Ending October 28th: