It seems like Christmas has been a strong sales period for the Nintendo Switch in the UK, at least from anecdotal evidence. The UK software charts for last week seem to back this up, with key Nintendo Switch games holding their own against PS4 and Xbox One behemoths such as Call of Duty: WWII, FIFA 18 (nobody seems to be buying the Switch version!), Star Wars Battlefront II and Assassin's Creed Origins.
Based on the combined charts, the unstoppable juggernaut that is Super Mario Odyssey jumps from 7th place to 6th place this week. An impressive feat given the very strong multiformat competition at this time of year.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe powerslides into 9th place from 11th and the mighty The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild makes the leap from 20th place back to a respectable 10th. Of course, if you were lucky enough to find a Nintendo Switch under the Christmas tree this year, these are the must have games to go along with it.
We're also seeing good momentum with sales of Splatoon 2, 1-2-Switch and Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle in the UK, too. Let us know your thoughts on the UK software charts with a comment below.
[source chart-track.co.uk, via chart-track.co.uk]
Comments 35
This means that people are getting Switch for Xmas and are buying these games now.
Nintendo holding any sort of place in a UK chart is impressive. Nintendo has always struggled in the UK moreso than other regions.
Not bad, considering how dominant Sony is in the UK.
Fifa not selling well on Switch isn't going to encourage EA to try any harder. But at this point it's a vicious cycle: EA doesn't really put its full effort behind Switch release, EA's games don't really sell on Switch, EA decides it's not worth putting its full effort behind Switch releases . . .
Fifa 18 has done alright on Switch. It was never going to compete, unit sales wise, with the PS4 / XBox versions, that's EAs bread & butter and they were always gonna see the majority of sales... But it has climbed the Switch charts again recently, and it's in the revenue generated chart, so it's making money and turning a profit, I have no doubt. It's also currently on the Switch eShop chart, no doubt helped by the fact it's currently on offer on Nintendos digital store.
"FIFA 18 (nobody seems to be buying the Switch version!)"
I'm not so sure, I think it has long-tail sales success potential. On Amazon it has been slowly climbing back up the chart in the UK. At least it was while it was £38. I think when people play it they realise how good a FIFA it is on Switch and that's helping sales. Obviously not in the league of PS4/X1 sales though i realise...
@MartyFlanMJFan Bugger, just read your post after posting mine! We seem to agree though! lol
I think as time goes by and the Switch becomes more common and popular, that games like FIFA will sell again on Nintendo consoles.
It’s almost a shame if that because of the Wii with its lack of traditional controllers, and the Wii U for its lack of sales, that people have stopped considering FIFA on Nintendo. Hopefully that will change, like it did for me.
UK gamers must be brainwashed with Nintendo Hype a lot.
They (almost) Never understand what it called great games and also appropriate.
@datamonkey haha, I you weren’t the only people posting about FIFA.
I have noticed the same. PS3 version sold more than the Switch initially, but the PS3 version sales dropped quickly. I believe that it’s partly due to FIFA being popular amongst casual gamers, or those that mostly play one game.
For many, like a few I know, didn’t upgrade to the PS4 for a while, as they were happy playing the FIFA on the PS3. However those that buy FIFA on the Switch, I believe will be more likely, like myself, who likes a variety of games including FIFA.
I think for this reason, as you said, on the Switch sales will continue steadily for a longer period.
I also assume as I said earlier, that as newer FIFA versions come out that sales will get stronger year on year, as more, non die hard Nintendo fans buy the Switch, and who are probably more likely to buy FIFA.
That is my assumptions anyway.
In the UK Nintendo should have called Mario Odyssey, Fun In Fashion Adventures, using the FIFA abbreviation everywhere. That’s the only way it would have sold more.
Ive shown switch fifa to quite a lot of people now and every one of them has been surprised by how well it runs and how good it looks. I think word of mouth and will be what gets people to consider buying it.
Also if EA have already put in the hard work on the custom engine for this years edition I could easily see them building on and perfecting it for fifa 19. I think at the very least we'll continue seeing Fifa games from EA on switch
It's not impossible that EA will look at the increasing penetration the Switch is achieving and put out a more equal version next time round.
Same old same old. Basically people went bought a Switch and the same 3 Nintendo games.
Poor Xenoblade. Monolith should just go independent and release on multiplat. They going nowhere under Nintendo as a 1st party.
I am glad it is selling well it is an amazing game. I wanted to get FIFA for the switch but there were too many other games that caught my attention. The digital sale looked good for it but I like to have the physical copies with the lack of storage on the switch.
Are there any charts for all of Europe or just the UK?
@Agramonte Xenoblade 2 is a PS2 style JRPG. It was never going to light up the UK charts. Be realistic.
@Indielink Xenoblade is nothing like the PS2 games. And it did not light up ANY chart. They could easily be like a Level-5 on their own
@Ziggy93 I'm just hoping EA doesn't use this game's performance as an excuse to duck out.
@Indielink It's already done LTD numbers of the previous "Chronicles" games in Japan.
Seems to be doing decent business in the US as well.
@Agramonte
The JRPG audience on PS4 and PC isn't that big, and is non-existent on XBO, especially in the UK.
XBC2 will become the best selling entry in the trilogy anyways, so I doubt Nintendo or Monolith Soft is concerned.
@Agramonte I dont think Monolith wants to go solo. At least under Nintendo their games arent episodic and canned half way through.
Plus they get to make what they want. Big plus there.
And yeah, its sold better than XC1, a end of life Wii game when the system was dying in a niche genre that had a botched launch in a major territory.
Then it outsold XC3D, an exclusive for a mid generation refresh of a handheld that was also a port.
Then it outsold XCX, an even more niche game for a dead system at the end of its life that no one bought.
So XC2 has actually done really well.
Plus Monolith does more than Xenoblade. You should pay attention to the credits of some Nintendo games. You'd be surprised how useful they are.
@StuOhQ I hope so too. As long as sales keep going throughout the year, I see no reason why not. Besides, they released it on PS3 and XB360, which suggests it’s still profitable, so there is no reason to stop supporting it, especially when support may grow with the success and the change of attitude towards the console to gamers.
@Agramonte By the looks of it, everyone who got a PS4/Xbox One picked up the same old same old games too. Call of Duty, FIFA and Assassins Creed. AC took a break last year but other than that all 3 have had annual releases for the last decade or so and always dominate the top places over the holidays. Super Mario, Zelda and Kart (not annual releases) are Nintendo's biggest IP so it's not at all surprising to see them be their biggest sellers just as FIFA is for EA, COD for Activision, AC for Ubisoft. If you noticed, neither Sony or Microsoft have a single 1st party developed game in the top 40. Gran Turismo and Forza are in there but they're 2nd party. Oh how they'd love to own IP that could compete with Nintendo's.
As for Xenoblade 2, up until this week it's been in top 2 places on the US/UK/EU and Japanese Eshop charts basically since it released so clearly it's been doing OK.Enter the Gungeon has sold over 75, 000 copies in 2 weeks on the Eshop and it's been hovering around the top 10, with a high of 3rd for a couple of days. That gives an indication to how much XC2 must be selling at the least.Those digital sales combines with retail sales means its doing pretty well. XCX sold over 1 million copies on Wii U, a low selling console. So I'm sure Monolith Soft are fairly happy with how things are going with Nintendo. Especially since their bosses are paying for much of the game's development,allowing them to be much more ambitious than they ever could as a 3rd party. Plus I don't recall any multi million selling JRPG's on PS/Xbox.
@OorWullie Stop talking sense you, we'll have none of that round here thank you very much! Lol 😉
I didn't get one but I want one
Best selling Switch games in the UK in 2017:
1) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
2) Super Mario Odyssey
3) The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild
4) 1 2 Switch
5) Splatoon 2
6) Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
7) FIFA 18
The Top 3 have each sold over 300,000 copies, with Mario Odyssey on its way to becoming the Switch's best seller. The Top 6 have each sold over 100,000 copies, with Mario + Rabbids being a few hundred copies shy from outselling Splatoon 2.
The Switch itself surpasses 300,000 units sold during the week of Mario Odyssey's launch, so my guess is that is reached 550,000 - 600,000 units sold by now.
@OorWullie Because everyone has their slots. Persona5, TC: Wildlands, Nioh, Nier. HZD, Tekken, RE7 all sold their 1 million plus games - made money for their publishers and now you have another batch of AAA hits. BattleFierld 1 was not on the top of the charts in March 2017. It sold its billions worth of cash during the holidays and later the rest of us came out and put Persona 5 on top of the chart and made that a million seller. My copy of Zelda is in my LE box on my book shelf - I went and bought Xenoblade 2 LE in December. Where are all the people who bought a Switch at launch like me? Fifa18 on Switch was dirt cheap during the holidays - it was a joke.
Nobody on that list has digital sales included. Good bet if it did it would be even further down. The entire nonsense of bringing up XB:X sale numbers on the WiiU only works on people who did not have one. I had a WiiU - We had nothing else, sure everyone got a copy - it had zero competition. it was the same story as Tokyo Mirage FE. Same as Xenoblade 2... it had the entire month of December for itself. Nintendo cleared the deck - and the only JRPG all year on top of that.
Not about selling 1 or 2 games at kazillion copies a year - it is having a base that buys a bunch of games at 1million + every other month from a bunch of people. Sure, nobody was making money on the WiiU at 15 million world wide units so not a surprise that at 10 million you also only see Nintendo up there. So hopefully it will average out, But right now - it is the same old, same old.
@agramonte, not everybody was able to buy a switch at launch because it sold out. It took me five months to finally get one. Xenoblade chronicles 2 just came out not long ago. You know that different genre sell well in different regions. Nintendo is weak in the UK, but is strong in France and Germany. Nintendo is very strong in Japan and north America. Don't be surprise if Nintendo have their way, they might have china's market also.
@Agramonte They don't make the mass appeal cross market stuff that Level-5 does. Even if Monalith went 3rd party they would never do Level-5 kinds of numbers. Nintendo provides Takahashi with the security he needs to make his weird and awesome games.
Nintendo charting in the UK is truly amazing, considering it is one of their weaker markets.
Odyssey is an excellent game, I'm happy to see it on the chart.
@Agramonte "Everyone got a copy". That's bull and you know it.
And why are you asking where all the early adopters of the system are? Whats that got to do with anything
@YummyHappyPills what are you talking about how many people you think play jRPGs - there was a max total of 15million base on the WiiU. Yes, pretty much the entire group came out for it.
Because we all got zelda back in March - it sold 1-1 ratio. Buy something else! People have spent 8 months buying Zelda, Mario, MarioKart and Splatoon. Nintendo fan base rather buy a rehashed $60 WiiU Mario Kart than a brand new Xenoblade game. 1,2 Switch is garbage!
@Agramonte If the entire group came out for it...it would have sold more than the 700k or so.
@YummyHappyPills Well there you have it - it was ignored on the WiiU also. Fantastic!
Why would anyone buy the switch version of fifa 18? Fifa is boring repetitive and rubbish. If you want to play a proper football game get fifa international soccer (the first one). Let Xbox and playsation ruin themselves wit these stupid modern games (Xbox was already ruined before it was made). Time for Nintendo to become the big gaming company again.
@Agramonte Monolith Soft have done Project X Zone and have assisted with the mainline 3D Zelda titles (SS and BoTW, iirc) over the past few years. Breath of the Wild and its open world wouldn't be the same without them, lol.
Regarding the sales of the Xenoblade series so far, I'd say that they're negatively affected by two major factors:
(1) That the games do not have much overlap with the general Nintendo audience in the first place - and that they aren't as easy to get into, thus also denying them the breakout opportunity that Fire Emblem had on the 3DS.
(2) The general (J)RPG audience already have platforms (in this case, PS4 or PSV) that offer an abundance of the titles they want, and that Xenoblade alone isn't enough to entice them to buy a Switch. (I'm one of them, except that I'm still clearing out my 3DS backlog, so I'll just wait until the next Fire Emblem to hop onboard.)
Xenoblade is actually doing fairly well, I'd say, though I'd still wait for whenever the full-year financial report comes out. That's when we'd know if Xenoblade 2 sold over or under a million units.
...
I think I remember you from some other site I visit.
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