Resident Evil 7 tops UK January charts after less than a week on sale

Resident Evil 7 was the biggest selling boxed game in the UK last month.

The number of boxed games sold during January was down by 6.3% to 1.2m titles sold. Revenue dipped 3% to £33.4m.

Yet considering the slow start to the year - following a less than stellar Christmas period - that's not as bad as it could have been.

Resident Evil 7 has a lot to thank for that. The game was only on sale for five days of the month (the data runs from January 1st to January 28th), but was comfortably the best-selling game of the period. It even goes someway to dispelling the myth that publishers shouldn't release big games during the first month of the year.

The title's performance had a profound impact on Capcom's standing in the publisher rankings, which rose to No.6 (from No.18) in terms of units and No.2 in terms of revenue (this was because Resident Evil 7 was a full priced game). EA remained No.1 on the back of a string of successful Q4 titles, including FIFA 17 and Battlefield 1.

The only other new game in the Top 50 for last month was Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter, which made No.22.

The best-selling budget title of January was Rocket League, published by 505 Games. Meanwhile, PS4 dominated the 'individual formats' charts. Resident Evil 7 on PS4 was No.1, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare on PS4 was No.2, GTA V on PS4 was No.3, while Xbox One held the following two places with its version of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (No.4) and Forza Horizon 3 (No.5). The Xbox One version of Resident Evil 7 only managed No.9, which shows that Sony's marketing partnership with the game (plus the inclusion of PlayStation VR support) had a significant impact upon the sales on that platform.

Here is the full UKIE/GfK January Top 20: