FIFA 18 takes No.1, three out of five copies sold on PS4

Electronic Arts has taken the No.1 spot in the UK charts with this year's FIFA, with PlayStation 4 taking the majority of its sales.

The PS4 edition accounted for 60% of all FIFA 18 copies sold - up from its 53% share of FIFA 17's launch. Gfk Chart-Track notes that this was partly assisted by the presence of official bundles on retail shelves.

Xbox One followed with more than a third of all sales. In fact, when combined the two consoles accounted for 97% of all FIFA 18 units shifted.

This means that for all the excitement surrounding the Switch version, the Nintendo SKU took less than 3% of sales - especially since legacy Xbox 360 and PS3 copies were also available. This is no doubt a sign of how low the Switch's UK installbase is (particularly when compared to Xbox One and PS4), but may also tap into another trend that was reported.

GfK Chart-Track observes that FIFA's launch sales were down by 25% year-on-year, and notes that this may be attributed to the rise of digital sales through the PlayStation and Xbox stores. Switch's digital store has also proved to be popular, so its sales of FIFA may be higher than the physical charts indicate.

We commented on the rising number of games with seemingly weaker sales than their predecessors last week.

It's also worth noting that FIFA 18 came out on Friday last week, while historically the series has always launched on a Tuesday. The lack of other major new releases meant its claim for the No.1 spot was in little danger, but it may also account for the 25% drop in sales given that it had four fewer days on shelves.

FIFA 18's debut knocks Destiny 2 down to second place for the first time since launch, its sales dropping 26% week-on-week. Last week's big new release - Bandai Namco's Project Cars 2 - drops to No.7 with less than half the sales it managed at launch. The only other new entry in the Top 40 was NIS America's Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, in at No.36.

One last notable inclusion in the Top 10 is Forza Horizon 3, which re-enters at No.3 with a 253% increase in sales. This is primarily due to the number of hardware and software packages that bundled in the acclaim racer with copies of FIFA 18.

You can find UKIE/GfK's weekly Top Ten for the UK games market below. As always, it only represents physical sales.