Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 physical sales up over 40% compared with Vanguard | UK Boxed Charts

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has posted a far better week at physical retail than last year's disappointing Call of Duty: Vanguard.

Sales of the new title are 42% up compared with Vanguard, and nearly 9% up over Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War from 2020.

Sales are down 61% compared with 2019's Modern Warfare, although downloads have since become dominant and digital sales data will be available later in the week. 53% of boxed sales were on PS5, 29% on Xbox and 18% on PS4, although do note that Xbox tends to perform more strongly when it comes to digital market share.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the third biggest physical release of the year, behind FIFA 22 and Pokémon Legends: Arceus.

The arrival of Call of Duty means FIFA 23 ends its four-week stay at No.1 and drops to second place. The EA football game continues to trend slightly ahead of its predecessor in terms of boxed sales by just over 7,000 copies.

New at No.3 is the Nintendo Switch game Bayonetta 3. The Bayonetta series has always been a relatively niche title in the UK. This title's opening week performance is 4% up over the Switch port of Bayonetta 2, which was released in 2018. There have been a few signs that Switch game sales are starting to slow in the UK, with overall Switch physical software sales down 9% year-to-date.

Last week's new Switch game, Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope from Ubisoft, dropped 52% in sales week-on-week and falls from No.3 to No.7. It's a pretty good result for a second week, although the game's first week performance was down by more than half what its predecessor managed (Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle released in August 2017).

The biggest new release last week was Warner Bros' Gotham Knights, which this week saw a 73% sales fall and drops from No.2 to No.5. Meanwhile, Persona 5 Royal (also released last week) drops from No.6 to No.15 after a 61% sales slip. Last week's A Plague Tale: Reqiuem has dropped out of the Top 40 altogether.

There were a few smaller releases this week. Star Ocean: The Divine Force debuts at No.18, Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord comes in at No.21, and Resident Evil: Village Gold Edition (featuring the game's new DLC) comes in at No.24.

Finally, bouncing back into the Top Five is Horizon: Forbidden West on PS5, once again boosted by hardware bundles.