FIFA 20 is back to the top in the UK on Black Friday

Black Friday completely changed the UK last week, with Nintendo, Microsoft, EA, and Activision seeing a huge result.

In the build-up to Black Friday through Saturday, 1.3 million games were sold in the UK. This is 22 percent lower than the figure for games sold during last year’s Black Friday build-up, but it’s thought that the boost of a few new releases last year, such as Red Dead Redemption 2, helped push game sales higher.

PlayStation 4 was the most popular in terms of physical game sales, with just under 500,000 games sold over the period, which is down by 37 percent year-on-year. The console was followed pretty closely by the Xbox One, with 413,112 game sales for the period, down by 26.7 percent year-on-year. The only platform to see improvement was the Nintendo Switch, with 361,967 units sold, up by 44 percent year-on-year.

FIFA 20 from EA was the best-selling game for the week, as FIFA 19 was for this time last year. The game sold well by itself, but laso saw a boost from a PlayStation 4 bundle that was discounted for Black Friday. Week-on-week, sales for the game were up by 226 percent.

Another PlayStation 4 console bundle gave a boost of 86 percent for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, landing it in second place in the chart this week. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order comes in third place with a 32 percent increase to sales thanks to an Xbox One bundle.

Hardware bundles had a huge effect on the charts this week thanks to Black Friday. Nowhere is this more evident than in fourth place with Sea of Thieves, a game that launched in 2018. The game was bundled with a number of Xbox One deals, including the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition, for prices ranging between £110 and £140, the best prices ever seen for the console.

Minecraft also benefited from these bundles since it too was included, selling just 500 units less than Sea of Thieves. The Switch version of Minecraft also appears in the top ten, with a sales boost of 84 percent.

In fact Nintendo had five games in the top ten for the week, with Pokemon Sword in sixth, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Edition in seventh, Pokemon Shield in eighth, and Luigi’s Mansion 3 in ninth. Each game saw a boost from Black Friday, though sales were down by 8 percent for Pokemon Sword, and 6 percent for Pokemon Shield.

PlayStation VR saw some aggressive sales once more for Black Friday. As a result, PlayStation VR Worlds made it to 14th place in the chart, Astro Bot Rescue Mission to 18th, Skyrim VR to 20th, Resident Evil 7 to 23rd, and Everybody’s Golf to 25th.

A smattering of other games also saw a huge boost in the chart thanks to Black Friday. Marvel’s Spider-Man jumped 691 percent up to 13th place, Borderlands 3 saw a boost of 380 percent, landing in 31st, and Anthem saw growth of 246 percent, moving up to 32nd place in the chart. Anthem in particular saw a staggeringly low price at £5 in some retailers.

Even games like Death Stranding and Ring Fit Adventure, which dropped further down in the chart as older games saw sales boosts, had significantly improved week-on-week sales.

A more extended list of top sellers can be found here.