UK Charts: Final Fantasy 7 Remake is No.1 as boxed market grows again

Final Fantasy 7 Remake was the best-selling boxed game in the UK last week.

The anticipated RPG sold half of the last major game in the franchise, Final Fantasy 15, which arrived at the start of December in 2016. Final Fantasy 7 Remake has suffered from severe distribution challenges caused by the coronavirus crisis, with physical game stores closed throughout the UK due to a Government-imposed lockdown. It's also ill-advised to compare sales for a game released in April with one launched during the Christmas sales window.

The Square Enix title did manage to sell double the launch sales of last week's classic PlayStation remake, Capcom's Resident Evil 3.

Although High Street shops are closed, the number of boxed video games grew again last week by 2%. Since the start of the lockdown in the UK, over one million boxed games have been sold, and if you include the week before -- which featured the launch of Animal Crossing: New Horizon on Nintendo Switch -- that number jumps to 1.5 million. These are the sort of sales figures you would typically expect to see in the build-up to Christmas.

The number of physical games sold in the UK so far this year is up by just over 3% year-on-year -- a drastic change from just a few weeks ago when the market was down by more than 20%.

But it's not been new games that has driven this year-on-year increase, but older titles such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, FIFA 20 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, alongside console bundled games such as Forza Horizon 4, The Last of Us Remastered and Horizon Zero Dawn. Console hardware sales have spiked considerably over the past few weeks as consumers look for entertainment during the coronavirus lockdown, and it appears this has resulted in new console customers entering the market.

After a few weeks of decline, Nintendo Switch games have sold strongly this week as more consoles were made available -- although they have since sold out. As a result, Mario Kart 8: Deluxe rose 317% in sales week-on-week and jumped from No.25 to No.5. Animal Crossing: New Horizons also saw a 14% sales bump, and rose up one place to No.3.

There was also a very small number of Ring Fit Adventure games released into the market last week, which saw the Switch game re-enter the charts at No.25 with an 192% sales increase.

Last week's big new release was Resident Evil 3, and that game drops from No.7 to No.2 after a 78% fall in sales week-on-week. Meanwhile, Doom: Eternal continues its slide down the charts, falling from No.15 to No.20 with a 26% sales dip.

Here is the GfK Top Ten for the week ending April 11th