Resident Evil: Village is the third biggest PS5 launch so far | UK Boxed Charts
But physical sales down over previous Resident Evil games
Resident Evil: Village has comfortably taken No.1 spot in this week's UK boxed charts, according to GfK Entertainment.
The horror game is the second biggest boxed launch of the year behind Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury. 49% of its sales were on PS5, 31% on PS4 and 20% on Xbox.
It's the third biggest PS5 game launch since behind Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which were released in November last year. In fact, week one sales alone has made it the seventh biggest PS5 game so far, behind Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Demon's Souls, Watch Dogs Legion and Sackboy: A Big Adventure.
It's the second biggest week one for a boxed Xbox Series game, too, behind Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. It is already No.3 on the all-time Xbox Series list, behind Call of Duty and Immortals Fenyx Rising.
However, it's not got close to the sales of previous Resident Evil games. Sales are down over 25% compared with the launch of Resident Evil 2: Remake (released in 2019) and almost 40% down compared with 2017's Resident Evil 7. It did sell better than last year's Resident Evil 3 Remake, with launch sales 76% higher.
Of course, this is just physical sales, and digital has accelerated significantly over the past 18 months. Considering the game's popularity on Steam, it is likely the game will have achieved strong results once the digital data comes in later this week.
The launch of Resident Evil Village means that last week's No.1, New Pokémon Snap, tumbles to No.2 after a 63% drop in sales week-on-week. Last week's No.2 game, Returnal, falls to No.15 after an 84% drop in sales.
FIFA 21 is at No.3, the football game rises three places after some pricing activity boosted sales by 79%. Nintendo Switch continues its dominance of the physical charts, with six games in the Top Ten. Alongside the aforementioned Pokémon Snap, the other games are Mario Kart 8: Deluxe at No.4 (up 29%), Animal Crossing: New Horizons at No.5 (up 5%), Minecraft on Switch at No.6 (up 13%), Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury at No.7 (down 28%) and Ring Fit Adventure at No.9 (up 13%).
Nintendo released a new blue version of the Switch Lite console last week.
Here is the GfK Top Ten for the week ending May 8th:
| Last Week | This Week | Title |
|---|---|---|
| New Entry | 1 | Resident Evil: Village |
| 1 | 2 | New Pokémon Snap |
| 6 | 3 | FIFA 21 |
| 4 | 4 | Mario Kart 8: Deluxe |
| 5 | 5 | Animal Crossing: New Horizons |
| 7 | 6 | Minecraft (Switch) |
| 3 | 7 | Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury5 |
| 8 | 8 | Grand Theft Auto |
| 9 | 9 | Ring Fit Adventure |
| 10 | 10 | Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War |