Crash Bandicoot 4 narrowly beats Star Wars Squadrons to No.1 l UK Boxed Charts

Activision's Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time beat EA's Star Wars Squadrons to No.1 this week, with just 1,000 boxed sales separating the two games.

The latest Crash Bandicoot title follows the successful remakes of the first three Crash games (released in 2017 as Crash Bandicoot: N.Sane Trilogy) and Crash Team Racing (released in 2018 as Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled). This new game is an entirely original release, although it still pays homage to the popular original trilogy.

It's unlikely Activision expected the new game to match the success of the more nostalgic remakes, which is just as well because Crash 4's launch sales are 80% lower than that of N.Sane Trilogy. Crash has a history with PlayStation, and so it's no surprise to see that 82% of sales were on PS4 with the remainder on Xbox One. The new game was not made for Nintendo Switch (at least not yet), which has been a popular platform for Crash games with big sales for the N.Sane Trilogy and Crash Team Racing.

Second place belongs to Star Wars: Squadrons, which is the latest Star Wars title from Electronic Arts. In terms of boxed sales, the game hasn't performed especially strongly, with launch sales 72% lower than that of last year's Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (which is a very different genre). It's worth noting that due to the COVID-19, sales of new games have been stronger in the download space over the past six months compared with physical, so it's likely that Squadron's overall launch sales will be a lot closer to Fallen Order's debut week than it appears here (digital data is not included in these charts). EA has also been proactive in selling this game as a download.

The new game sold best on PS4, with 68% of sales coming on Sony's platform and the remainder on Xbox One.

The only other new title in the UK Top 40 boxed charts is Untitled Goose Game at No.34.

Last week's No.1, Super Mario 3D All-Stars, drops to No.3 after a 23% drop in sales week-on-week. While Marvel's Avengers falls from No.2 to No.5 with a 20% drop in sales week-on-week. Last week's new Mafia titles, Definitive Edition and Trilogy, hold on in the Top Ten at No.9 and No.10 respectively, with sales down 57% and 40% week-n-week

In next week's chart, FIFA 21 will be No.1.

Here is the GfK Top Ten for the week ending October 3rd: