Kingdom Hearts III releases and tops the UK charts

After 14 years in the making Kingdom Hearts 3, from Square Enix, has topped the UK charts in its debut week on sale.

This is the first time a Kingdom Hearts game has topped the UK charts, and it’s the most successful launch for the series on record. However, even though the original Kingdom Hearts was such a massive hit for Playstation 2, UKIE/GfK data doesn’t go back far enough to provide analysis between the two game’s launch weeks.

Compared to Kingdom Hearts 2 sales of Kingdom Hearts 3 have been more than double 14 years later. The third game in the mainline series is also proving to be far more popular than spin-offs in the franchise such as Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep, and 358/2 Days. The game is even outselling the Remix Kingdom Hearts titles, which brought older games to modern consoles as remastered versions.

It’s expected that Kingdom Hearts 3 sold even better than UK chart numbers show since this is only based on physical sales. With some preceding titles digital sales weren’t possible though, so this still provides a somewhat accurate overview of just how well the game has performed.

The Kingdom Hearts series originally released for Playstation 2, and as such it has a huge fan base on Sony’s platforms. 82 percent of physical Kingdom Hearts copies sold were for Playstation 4, with the remaining 18 percent being sold for Xbox One.

The game pushed Resident Evil 2 Remake, which sat at the top of the chart last week, down to second place in the chart. Sales of Resident Evil 2 Remake fell by 67 percent, but it still didn’t fall too far in the chart.

The rest of the chart is largely unchanged, with most titles simply shifting down one place. Red Dead Redemption 2 sits in third, FIFA 19 in fourth, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 rounds off in fifth for the top 5 of the chart.

The second half of the top 10 contains three Nintendo Switch titles, the staple of Grand Theft Auto 5, and Spyro Reignited Trilogy rounding off in tenth, rising from eleventh last week.

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