An epic XL

Fire Emblem: Awakening arrived in Europe last week, bringing with it exceptional strategy gameplay and a level of challenge to lead to plenty of chewed nails for early adopters. Critically acclaimed and already performing well in North America, the question was how well it would perform in Europe after its somewhat protracted release. If the UK is anything to go by, it's doing rather well.

After the recent success of Luigi's Mansion 2 — two weeks at number five and still up in eighth place this week — Awakening had a challenge to do better, and it actually has. It's come in at number three, behind multi-platform behemoths Bioshock Infinite and Injustice: Gods Among Us (the Wii U version of that game didn't arrive last week), making it the second highest new entry and comfortably the best-placed console exclusive. In good news for 3DS hardware sales, meanwhile, it's confirmed that the attractive limited edition 3DS XL model accounted for 31% of all XL hardware sales, contributing to an overall sales increase of 49% over the previous week's sales of the super-sized handheld.

As for Wii U, we're afraid there's little to report, with no exclusives appearing in the top 40 this week.

And so we have the rare sight of two 3DS exclusives currently in the UK top 10, showing that both have captured public imagination and generated some welcome sales. Both titles, in our view at least, are thoroughly deserving of that success; once again, great games make happy accountants.

[source ukie.info]