Ghost Recon: Wildlands was the UK's best-selling game of March Just beating Horizon: Zero Dawn

Christopher Dring Head of Games B2B Tuesday 4th April 2017 Share this article Share

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Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands was the best-selling boxed game in the UK last month.

The title narrowly beat PlayStation's Horizon: Zero Dawn - although, of course, that was a single-format release. Horizon on PS4 was the best-selling individual SKU of the month.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild had to settle for third spot, although its primary platform had stock shortages throughout the month.

Mass Effect Andromeda sits just behind Zelda, although was only on sale for half the month, while LEGO Worlds at No.5 rounds up an entirely new Top Five.

The latest monthly report from stat-tracker GfK also features the first ever boxed sales chart for Nintendo Switch. The Top Five were: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (No.1), 1-2-Switch (No.2), Super Bomberman R (No.3), Just Dance 2017 (No.4) and Skylanders Imaginations (No.5).

Nintendo Switch game sales accounted for 8.2% of all games sold last month in the UK, making it the third most successful machine for game sales - behind PS4 and Xbox One. Due to the higher priced nature of Switch games, Nintendo's console accounted for over 12% of the revenue generated by boxed software last month.

However, despite some major launches, the actual number of games sold in March 2017 was down compared with March 2016 (a slight drop of about 2.8%). This is because Ubisoft's Ghost Recon: Wildlands failed to match the performance of last year's The Division - which emerged as one of the biggest selling games of the year.

Revenue, however, makes for better reading. £59m was generated from boxed game sales last month, a rise of 2% compared with March 2016. Again, the higher cost of Switch games played its part on that.

Mirroring the Top Three, the biggest publisher of the month was Ubisoft (19% share of the market), followed by Sony (15.2%), Nintendo (14.1%), EA (12.2%) and then Warner Bros (8.5%).

Other new releases in the Top 20 last month included 1-2 Switch at No.9 and Nier Automata at No.17.