Mario Kart 8 Deluxe tops the last 2021 UK sales chart

The period after Christmas and before New Year is typically quiet for sales, and the sales of video games usually drop at that time. They dropped almost by 40% last week. FIFA 22, which was on top of the Christmas chart, had a sales drop of 63% and appeared in second place.

Nintendo Switch games did relatively well last week and did not have such a dramatic drop in sales as other platforms. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe took the top of the charts with only a 16% sales drop week-on-week. This is the seventh time that the game took the top of the sales chart in the UK, since its launch in April 2017.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons took third place, climbing from seventh with only 8% decreases in sales week-on-week. The fourth position is taken by Spider-Man: Miles Morales that continues to sell well because of the availability of new PS5 console stock.

Call of Duty: Vanguard has dropped from second place to fifth place with a 64% week-on-week drop in sales. This is a lower than the usual result for the Activision game. Typically a Call of Duty title would share the first two places with a FIFA title in a New Year UK sales chart. This has been the case for the last several years. There are several reasons why Call of Duty: Vanguard is doing worse than its predecessors in the franchise but that discussion is beyond the scope of this particular article.

Grand Theft Auto The Trilogy: Definitive Edition and Among Us were released two weeks ago and entered the chart at No. 8 and No 5 respectively. The following week, which was Christmas week, GTA dropped 70% and Among Us lost 81%, landing at No 23 and No 29 accordingly. This week both new releases have dropped out of the Top 40 entirely.

The top ten best-selling games in the UK for the week ending January 1, 2022: