Mass Effect Andromeda tops UK charts but can't match Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect: Andromeda enjoyed a strong launch in the UK, although its physical sales are down compared with previous games in the series.

Andromeda hasn't receive the high critical reception that the franchise has enjoyed historically, and the result is that Andromeda's week one sales are lower than Mass Effect 2 and 3 (but higher than Mass Effect 1, which was released only on Xbox 360 back in 2007).

The fastest-selling game in the series is 2012's Mass Effect 3, which sold over a third more units in its first week than Andromeda.

However, that was five years ago, and since then digital sales have risen significantly. Indeed, GfK says that 10% of physical Mass Effect 3 sales were made on PC (during week one), but only 4% of Mass Effect Andromeda sales came via PC physical. Digital is now dominant in the PC space, and is also growing in the console area, but GfK does not track those figures (yet). As a result, it's not clear how well Andromeda really did compared with its predecessors.

Regardless of how it compares, it was still a strong performance for EA. Mass Effect: Andromeda is the third fastest-selling game of the year, behind Ghost Recon: Wildlands and Horizon: Zero Dawn, but ahead of Resident Evil VII and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Speaking of Zelda, that game enjoyed a 50% sales increase as some Nintendo Switch units begin to trickle their way back into retailers, while there were sales increase for FIFA 17, Rocket League, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Forza Horizon 3.

There was also a significant rise for Halo Wars 2. Microsoft's game just misses out on the Top Ten at No.11, boosted by some price cutting at retail. Sales for the RTS game increased by 129% last week.

No.2 in the charts is Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands, which suffered a 47% sales drop. Warner Bros's LEGO Worlds is down at No.3 with a small 29% sales dip, while Horizon: Zero Dawn drops to No.4 with a 23% decline.

Xbox One exclusives Rare Replay (up nine places to No.18) and Ryse: Sone of Rome (up six places to No.25) continue to perform strongly thanks to retail bundling with Xbox One hardware.