Mario Kart 8 Deluxe tops UK charts

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, a Nintendo Switch launch game that is actually a port of a six-year-old Wii U game, has managed to top the UK retail game sales charts this week.

The game saw a huge boost to sales of 70 percent week-on-week, pushing it up from seventh place to top the chart this week. Unfortunately for Ring Fit Adventure, this means another week in the second-highest spot in the chart, but two out of three of the top three games this week are still Nintendo Switch exclusives as a result.

This week’s chart saw no new releases, with 51 Worldwide Games, a new game last week, falling from sixth to ninth place this week. Interestingly sales for the game have only dropped by 18 percent week-on-week, meaning it’s still selling close to as good as it was at launch. This suggests that the game may be hanging around in the chart for a while yet.

A number of Nintendo Switch games saw a sales boost this week. This is thanks to an influx of new hardware stock for the console, and retailers putting on special bundles of them. Some retailers have even been required that consumers purchase a console with games, with no option to purchase the console by itself.

This week alone there are 15 Nintendo-published games in the top 40, and the following games all saw a sales bump: Luigi’s Mansion 3, Minecraft, Pokemon Sword, New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe, Pokemon Shield, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Super Mario Party, and Super Mario Maker 2.

Outside of Nintendo games, Forza Horizon 4 moved up from fourteenth place to eighth. The game is part of a new Xbox One X bundle that is being offered at a much lower price than usual right now.

The top ten best-selling games at retail in the UK for the week ending June 13, 2020: