Sea of Thieves releases and takes the top

The UK physical game sales chart has seen four new entries over the last week, but even so it’s not been as strong a week as the industry has seen earlier this year.

According to GfK, a data tracker, six new entries in the top 40 chart this week failed to sell as much as just one new entry from the same time last year. Mass Effect: Andromeda, for all its faults in the eyes of fans, is the game that’s beaten this week a full year on from release.

However, Sea of Thieves, which sits at number 1 in the chart, is far more likely to have sold more copies digitally than it has physical copies through retail stores.The reason for this is that the game is online only, and similar to Destiny 2 and other online only titles players prefer to own their copies digitally. Any Xbox One players with the Xbox Game Pass will also be able to play the game for free for a period of time, bypassing the need to buy an actual copy until the trial period comes to an end. Data analysts are interested to see whether sales remain healthy beyond the end of the free trial window.

Second in the chart is the co-op only title A Way Out. The game is a brand new IP from EA, heavily based online and also has a free trial for payers out at the moment. The game requires two players to play together either online via matchmaking or in the same room with two controllers, but no one plays alone.

In third place is another new title, Ni No Kuni 2: The Revenant Kingdom, from Bandai Namco. This has become the second highest grossing game of the week, and is exclusive to Playstation 4 and PC at the moment. Interestingly around a third of the sales of Ni No Kuni 2: The Revenant Kingdom were for the £140 collector’s edition featuring a plethora of additional content both digital and physical.

The fourth new game in the series is Assassin’s Creed Rogue Remastered for Xbox One and Playstation 4. The success of Assassin’s Creed: Origins has probably played a part in the sales of this release, even though they’re very different games.

Koei Tecmo’s A.O.T.2 (Attack on Titan 2) is a new entry at seventeenth place, and Detective Pikachu for Nintendo 3DS from Nintendo is another new entry at twenty-third place.