UK Charts: FIFA ends Call of Duty's nine-week stay at No.1

After nine weeks at the top, Activision's Call of Duty: WWII takes a tumble to No.2.

The game has been narrowly overtaken by EA's FIFA 18, which reclaims its position for the first time since October.

It means Call of Duty: WWII matches but does not beat the previous best for a Call of Duty game. Modern Warfare 2 also scored nine consecutive weeks at the top of the charts back in 2009.

Activision won't be too disappointed. The latest Call of Duty has been a significant turnaround the franchise, and WWII has already sold significantly more copies in the UK (physically) than last year's Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare has in total.

The Top Three is dominated by the biggest gaming brands in the UK, with GTA V returning to No.3. We've already written extensively about the performance of this game, although chart firm GfK has revealed some new statistics. The game has never fallen out of the Top 40 in its 225 weeks in the charts so far, and it has spent 191 of those weeks (85%) in the Top 10. As a result of its performance, there are very high expectations around Rockstar's next big release, Red Dead Redemption 2 in the spring.

Sticking with the big brands, No.4 is Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Origins. The game has stayed within the Top Six since launch, and has been a decent improvement over recent Assassin's Creed games in terms of sales.

Star Wars Battlefront II, which has been a disappointment in terms of physical sales, rounds off the Top Five. However, EA will be pleasantly surprised by the performance of The Sims 4. The game has continued to rise up the charts since its release in November, and is now at its highest position so far at No.6.

As the Christmas sales frenzy starts to die away, games that are closely tied to hardware sales have taken a small tumble. This is most notable with Nintendo Switch, as Super Mario Odyssey drops 64% in sales and falls from No.6 to No.8, while The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild drops 52% in sales (although the game actually rose up the charts to No.9).

With no major new releases in the charts, there are no new games in the Top 40 this week.

Here is the UKIE/GfK Top Ten for the week ending January 6th.