Battleborn takes #1 on a quiet week in the UK

Gearbox Software's Battleborn debuted at the very top of the UK chart last week, but it was a week in which the second most popular game was released in November 2015.

The 2K-published Battleborn was developed with fragments of a cancelled Gearbox game, Furious 4, which was first announced at E3 2011. Battleborn eventually made its debut in the pages of Game Informer in July 2014.

When Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford talked to GamesIndustry.biz in March this year, it was already a month after Battleborn's supposed February launch date. The release was delayed until May to ensure its stable online performance, with Pitchford claiming that, "Battleborn has a lot of new stuff in it, a lot of stuff people haven't done before or seen before in a video game. So it's pretty exciting to test it. It's terrifying though because we have no idea how it's going to be received. Well, we have a little idea, but not a great idea."

It got a much better idea following a beta test in April, which attracted more than two million people - not Star Wars Battlefront numbers, exactly, but a positive sign nonetheless.

The game's debut at the top of the UK chart can also be taken as a positive sign, but the absence of strong competition is plain to see. Last week, the second place game was Call of Duty: Black Ops III, which has been on sale for almost six months already. The question is whether Battleborn is able to sustain that initial rush of popularity, because the critical response has been somewhat mixed; it currently has a Metacritic average of 70 on PS4, 74 on Xbox One, and 78 on PC.

The UK top 10 is below, courtesy of Ukie and Gfk Chart-Track.