Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon Both Make Debut in UK Charts Top 5

Might buy it

I’m a huge switch fan but I’d rather play Skyrim in v r given the choice. Mind you I’ve played it through once in chox 360....

I wish you would keep the narrative but then at the bottom also post the complete chart.

I own both PSVR & a Switch, but to me it was a no-contest given both released on the same day.

Skyrim VR not only is proof of concept, but it also single-handedly justified the PSVR purchase.
Just like how Mario justified my Switch purchase.

What a great year for gaming!

UK charts is nice and all but it would be more interesting to see a complete European chart or isolated countries as well that Nintendo is selling better, like Germany, France, Spain, Italy and so on.

Also, it just isn't attractive and logical to talk about charts in general without presenting them in the form of a chart:

(position 1, position 2, position 3 and so on).

So, anybody know the install bases of Switch and PSVR in the UK?

Doom, as glad as I am to see it on Switch, is a full priced port of a 1 year old game which I've seen on sale for $10 recently, so I wouldn't expect gangbusters sales on Switch. It could have legs though, as probably most early Switch owners were Nintendo fans but other gamers will likely buy 1 as 3rd party support grows, and those new owners will want Doom on the go. Switch is selling well, but it still only has about half the Wii U install base. Most people bought a Switch for Zelda, MK or Splatoon in Japan. The Doom fans don't own a Switch yet. Emphasis on yet.

Obligatory UK is not Nintendo's best territory.

Can't we juste have a list with highlighted games for Nintendo platform?
Maybe some numbers?
How about Ultra sun and Ultra moon combined?
Why do you still make those awful articles?
Are you trying to retain information from us?

I can't recommend Doom highly enough, incredible game. If you don't have a PS4 or One, buy this game,it's worth every penny. Tabletop mode with the Pro or on the TV the game is amazing and even with the graphical downgrade is way beyond anything the Wii U could pull off.

Bought a copy of Skyrim at Game yesterday, still finishing a few quests on Oblivion on the 360 before getting started with it though!

Really nice to see Star Wars Battlefront II not getting the top spot (and it's hugely down on the first game). Hopefully EA (and others) will learn lessons from this.

Disappointed Doom isn’t selling better. It’s a bit worrying 3rd party sales are going so badly on Switch!

Been playing the campaign in Doom all weekend. It really is a masterpiece. The combat is so satisfying, the game looks great (only had two instances of framerate dip but noting awful) and the soundtrack is stellar with Mick Gordon just continuing his awesomeness following his Killer Instinct success. The audio drop outs are annoying and hopefully a fix is on the way.

I read somewhere someone saying Doom is like the most Nintendo like FPS there has ever been and with the way the mechanics all click I can see the thinking. It also reminds me a bit of my fave game of all time, Resident Evil 4, for reasons I can't quite put into words. It is just the feel of it.

If you are on the fence, I highly recommend.

Will be getting LA Noire today too, never played it before so looking forward to it.

Doom has held its top 5 place in the Eshop charts in both the UK and US. It was 4th until Skyrim knocked it down a position. LA Noire highest position so far is 12th,not great. Rocket League is unsurprisingly doing well though,straight to number 1 knocking Odyssey off its perch. Mario fought back and reclaimed 1st in the UK but it only lasted 1 day.

Post the God damn chart, not give us a text wall explaining what the concept of a chart is week in, week out. Journalism 101.

Isn't VR dead though?

If I had a PSVR (I don't have the space to accommodate such a system whilst staying at the folk's), then Skyrim VR (and eventually DOOM VFR) would be a no brainer. That said, it's amazing to have such a game on a portable device.

@Fuz I feel Doom is somewhat expected but I feel Skyrim will grow overtime, thanks to it not sacrificing too much on the base game and the convenient portability

Basically Skyrim on switch got outsold by the VR version that needs a 200 dollars accessory. LA Noire barely made it and Doom is on the way out.

Most people not paying full price to play old games (with little updates) just because it is portable. Xenoblade2 will chart well.

@nopainjustgame yeah let's just ignore the 3rd party publishers who have come out recently and said they very happy with switch software sales

I'd like to know what the digital sales are given that Doom sits in the top 5 and Skyrim went past Mario into second behind Rocket League. I do wonder if some of these 3rd party games may sell even better as digital only, this would remove the so called Switch tax and the annoyance over having to download part of the game anyway.

The sad part of all this is that Doom is easily one of the best games on Switch and anybody buying 1-2 Switch ahead of it (or any other game for that matter) needs to take a good look at themselves in the mirror 😃

@Fuz As far as I'm aware it's not just the Switch version that needs an additional download, the PS4 and One versions only has something like 4gb on disc and requires an extra 14gb download. All the negativity was around the Switch version though, I just wish it had been made clearer the Switch wasn't alone in needing this.

I would not go by UK sales in regards of the Switch getting 3rd party support in the future. We have seen throughout the year games selling terrible in the UK but were successful worldwide. Dragonball Xenoverse 2 is a real good example (as well as NBA 2K). Over here in the US, both Doom and Skyrim are in the top 5 best sellers category on the eshop. Since US is a much bigger market and MUCH more Nintendo friendly, I’m certain both game are doing real good.

The fact Amazon uk has skyrim sold out (my pre order still is yet to be given an estimated delivery) wont help sales, Don't know what their stock issue is as doom had the same problem.

@Adroitone yeah it's crazy how people suggest sales are awful across the board because of UK numbers.

It's not a worldwide representation at all.

@Randomlight Amazon UK need to fix up. Problems with doom and now skyrim. Dunno what they are doing.

@Malcrash https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-video-games/zgbs/videogames/ref=zg_bs_nav_0#2

US not U.K.
$349 Skyrim PSVR bundle: 25th
$59 Skyrim Switch: 32nd

Definitely not dead.

Picked up L.A noire over the weekend and I’m very pleased with it. Bit worried about the sales of these third party games. Hopefully they are in line to what they expected considering the titles ages. Really hope this doesn’t effect support going forward. Suppose digital isn’t included either so they could be higher than we know. They all seem to be in the top 10 in the eshop chart

Would be nice if you posted a chart.

Not too surprising, given they're full priced ports of older games.

I would buy Doom if it had gyro aiming and a more modest price tag.

@Randomlight Yep, it's an issue. FIFA had the same problem, they had no stock on release day and didn't expect more till around 10 days later. There was an even bigger issue with Amazon.com when I checked last week. When searching for Doom or LA Noire, neither showed up in the list.The UK import versions do but not the US versions. Not sure what is going on there or if it's since been fixed but that will have lost many sales.

@JamesR while I know this isn't a popular opinion I am really enjoying Star Wars battlefront 2. Have only played a few missions in the campaign so far but it has been a lot of fun, and the gameplay in the multiplayer is top notch. Combat feels so good in both the on foot shooting and the space battles. Heros vs villains is also a blast to play. It's a shame that such a great game is being overshadowed by a poor progression system and microtransations because the gameplay itself is everything I wanted from a Star Wars game. I hope EA still sticks with the plan of providing free DLC for the game when they reinstate microtransations because it will give the game longevity. It worked well for halo 5 and with some tweaking battlefront 2 could become an outstanding game overall as well.

@Randomlight yeah Doom was sold out on amazon on the Saturday morning the weekend of its release. It was doing really well on its chart before that. Pretty sure it effected impulse buys of it in quite a big way

@MsJubilee @EVIL-C @PuppyToucher From PushSquare:

1. Call of Duty: WWII
2. Star Wars Battlefront 2
3. FIFA 18
4. Pokémon Ultra Sun
5. Pokémon Ultra Moon
6. Assassin's Creed Origins
7. The Sims 4
8. L.A. Noire
9. Super Mario Odyssey
10. LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2

Not sure where SLIGEACH always gets the full charts from...

@Octane
Anyway, where is sligeach-eire ?

@Octane I clicked the link at the bottom of the article and was able to view the full charts, but it would definitely be more convenient to just post the full charts themselves rather than a link to them.

@Randomlight i ended up cancelling my pre-order with amazon as it was delayed, and I found a copy in Sainsbury's on Saturday - so i rewarded them stocking Ninty again by giving them my hard earned ££

@MsgBoardGamer where as this is the classic definition of people taking things that are said in jest way too seriously

@Anti-Matter Not sure, I think he got himself banned again.

@PuppyToucher That's right, here they are: http://www.chart-track.co.uk/index.jsp?c=p/software/uk/latest/index_test.jsp&ct=110015!

Dooms kinda boring I’m finding and the soundtrack is a bit annoying I’ll keep going though

@PuppyToucher same

I boil this down to three points. One is that it is close to Christmas. People can't justify spending 40-50 pound on themselves at this time of year. Second, these third party games are available on more powerful hardware for a much cheaper price as they've been out much longer. Third and possibly the most important, this doesn't take the e-shop sales into consideration. Doom and Skyrim are up in the top 5 on there. Most people i know who have a switch download over buying physical because they say it's a pain carrying cartridges around. Don't forget, Ultra Street Fighter 2 made it into the top 10 for a week, only for it to completely drop out the following week. Capcom still said that it was a success. Maybe we are underestimating download numbers?

Games like Ultra Sun and Moon should not really be listed separately if you ask me... if they were on different consoles, it would be understandable, but they are basically the same game on the same system.

Skyrim VR outperforming Skyrim VR is hardly surprising either... from what I understand it, the PSVR could really do with more games at the moment, wheres the Switch has still got plenty at the moment (despite what a lot of people say)... with Odyssey less than a month old and Xenoblade only a couple of weeks away it wasn't the best timing for Skyrim.
I will be getting Skyrim on the Switch, but will be waiting until around Christmas before I do, and I'm guessing quite a few others will be in a similar position.

One thing we don't know is the publishers own sales expectations for these. They will recognise that these are ports of old games and in some cases significantly more expensive on Switch. I've seen many comments online (as well as witnessing) about both Skyrim and Doom been out of stock on Amazon on several occasions, suggesting they may have had limited stock in the first place

@hiptanaka exactly,... Full priced old games do not represent how 3rd party games can do on Switch.

Top it off they sandwiched between a ton of new games on PS4/Switch at the same price. If 29.99 or 39.99 it would sell better

@PuppyToucher I think that every time! they do it with the Japanese one. Also could we get a US one? That seems like more or a Switch stronghold than the UK so it's nice to get good news.

@fox_mattcloud I think many are underestimating the digital downloads on Switch, unfortunately we have little idea how many copies are needed to move around the charts. Indie developers keep saying they have their best sales on Switch and the Bethesda games moved straight above all of them barring Rocket League (which I assume will do good numbers) and Skyrim moved above Mario. These may or may not make them successes, depending upon what the publishers were expecting but they will be significant none the less

In all reality we have no idea what the costs of porting games like LA Noire, Doom or Skyrim are or the sales expectations for those games.

When you look at a game like Doom the number of articles written about how great it is as a game, how much of a technical achievement it was for ID etc. - it put a 12 month old game in the news churn day after day. That's the type of advertising that you can't pay for directly. Even if it only turns out that Switch version only broke even it's probably been a very worthwhile investment from Bethesda (and it may turn out that the high price, high margin Switch copies have turned them a healthy profit besides).

@MsgBoardGamer that's basically what I'm getting at, if the publishers weren't expecting big sales in the first place they may have even hampered them slightly

Nintendo games rarely sell well in the U.K. from what I've seen. Sony really has their claws in that part of the world for some reason.

@electrolite77 the negative doomsayers show up only alongside bad news. Mostly from PushSquare

So in other words, if Bethesda makes another Doom, there's a decent chance it will skip the Switch. Then people will complain that there's no third party support. Or they'll make one that's missing content to cut costs cause they know it won't sell well. Either way, I see a lot of complaining in the future.

No digital right? I bet most people do Skyrim and Doom on digital since the cart is not holding a lot of the game.

Pokemon Ultra Sun/Moon sold ~76,000 copies at launch. Looks like Mario Odyssey will hold its status as the fastest selling Nintendo game of the year.

20% of LA Noire sales came from the Switch version, which is quite good considering that the Switch install base is <5% the size of the PS4/XBO install base. Not to mention that the game comes with a hefty mandatory download. And it's also the UK lol

Please highlight that these figures are for physical sales only, not eshop (or sony/MS equivalent). As a result, this is not an accurate indicator of sales figures and these figures end up pretty meaningless.

Skyrim is at No2 & Doom at No.5 in the eshop sales chart - both were also in the top 6 prior to release from eshop pre-orders/downloads. What are the sales figures from the eshop?

No doubt like many others, I've been downloading retail games from the eshop rather than buying physical copies simply for the convenience of not having the swap cartridges around.....the opposite of my 3DS library which is almost entirely physical copies.

@YummyHappyPills Weren't you that the one that threw down the challenge on PushSquare?

'So, taking all bets, what sells more? This, or a portable Skyrim?'

You have your answer, BLP .

@electrolite77 Please excuse us multiplatform gamers that like to keep up with Nintendo news & can see reality beyond fandom.
Nintendo & Sony are the best in the business when it comes to exclusives. It would be a shame to miss out on games either bring out.

While its not my dream scenario of USUM selling better then Battlefront 2, it does show at least BF2 will take a hit. The bad publicity won't stop everyone from buying the game, but EA will have to explain to investors and whatnot why the game did not meet their projected sales expectations and so on.

If you did pick it up, then I do encourage you not to buy any lootcrates when they do go live. It might be tempting, but it'll only make future games apply this tactic more and more the more you give in your wallet....

@Trickbaby14
NIntendo games haven't been selling great in the UK the last few years due to one simple reason - Nintendo UK thought that they could sell games without advertising (particularly evident with the WiiU) and a pretty useless marketing team (I remember some idiot woman talking about Xmas like we still lived in the 50's where the kid had no say in what the parent would buy them - and that was in the WiiU lifespan). Sony have done well in the UK because they had a budget for adverts!
The Switch is finally getting a decent set of advertisements (more a week than the lifetime of the WiiU!) sales have rocketed as a result, and is on many Xmas wish-lists (not usually the case for NIntendo consoles).
Bear in mind though that the UK has 65M citizens, so will have a smaller market than, say, Germany (82M) or US (320M)

I expect the PS4 and XBO to each sell ~3X more units during Black Friday week than the Switch, if not more. Last year, the PS4 and XBO sold 4.5X and 3X more than the 3DS on Black Friday week respectively, despite the launch of Pokemon Sun/Moon (the fastest selling Nintendo game of all time). Just goes to show how weak Nintendo is in the UK relative to its competitors and relative to other European territories.

Xenoblade Chronicles X sold around 10,000 copies in its first week in December 2015. I think Xenoblade Chronicles 2 will perform roughly the same.

@Fight_Teza_Fight you're totally right mate, because sales worth of three days and in one country always determine the total amount of sales of a title. Did you want some fries with that salt?

@ThumperUK I don't think it's just about advertising.

Nintendo has consistently and completely got the marketing wrong for the UK. They don't understand exactly who's buying their products or the type of adverts they should make, the tone of those adverts or where they should place them. A bigger advertising budget might help to hide that lack of quality marketing work but it would just be treating the symptoms rather than the cause.

That's not a Wii U thing (which was mis-marketed on a global level from the very beginning) - it's something that goes back to the NES days and that got worse after they disbanded Nintendo UK in the 90's. Because Nintendo of Europe - being a very German company - know better how the UK market works...

Crucially in the UK they've also failed to establish/maintain/foster their retail partnerships. Behind the scenes (mostly) they stupidly burned a lot of bridges with Asda, Tesco etc. in the Wii U era and they have to re-build that trust. Having a strong point of sales presence in those supermarkets (and in GAME) is essential and drives sales to the mass market in a way that has nothing to do with advertising.

@gortsi Both versions launched on the same day. US sales of both seem in line with UK figures if Amazon US best seller list is anything to go by.

Salt & Pepper, please. Thanks for offering .

I'll drop this subject though. It's best to always have reasonable expectations, otherwise you'll end up disappointed. Hopefully publishers share the same opinion, otherwise I worry for 3rd party support on Switch- not that it needs it, the exclusives & portability make up for it.

@Malcrash I don't want to divert from the article, but PSVR is far away the most successful & profitable VR headset. Sony are dominating so easily that Andrew House is worried about sustained long term growth. Sony can't be the only one moving the industry forward. Competition is needed to thrive the medium forward.

@Fight_Teza_Fight I mean it in terms of the headsets in general. PSVR is obviously the more general and affordable choice, but even then, it didn't really rake in too much money, like the Vive and Oculus Rift

To all asking why the charts aren't shown, I've heard its something to with licensing or something; basically NLife don't have the permissipn to reproduce the charts here but can link to them.

I check the sales myself every week, have done for ages. GFK who compile them ask that media sites don't display the charts & @NintendoLife are simply honouring that request, that's been made clear many times in the past.

@Fight_Teza_Fight that's true, but sales is a long run game. I wouldn't hold my breath about VR , if the most successful platform only managed to sell 1.5 million headsets in an install base of 65 million in one year the future doesn't look that bright.

@electrolite77 I know.

All my life Nintendo's marketing decisions in the UK have left me banging my head in frustration.

Sony by comparison have always had an A* sales & marketing operation in the UK (more generally too but in the UK especially). They have the retail partnerships that matter and they have a very clear idea of who they're marketing to and how to reach them. If it were a boxing match it would have been stopped many times over.

I'd have sacked Nintendo's whole marketing operation in the UK after "Willst thou save the girl... or play like one" (yep - you don't want people to see that advert) and various times over since then for similar things.

I'd also have sacked their sales team for letting supermarkets put in unrealistic orders for Wii U and then making a hash of handling the aftermath. It's harmed their business long term but I suppose the sales reps responsible at least hit their bonus targets back in 2012 and have probably moved on since...

As excited as I am that Doom is on Switch, I can't justify the cost. I'll have to wait until it drops in price, or put it on the Christmas wish list. Rocket League for 20 bucks is much better value for money, I think.

@MsgBoardGamer
Well yes, no other European territory outside of France and Germany has a big enough mature gaming population to be a bigger market than the UK for Nintendo.

@FX102A If NintendoLife doesn't have a permission to publish the chart then it is better not to analyze its results. It's like advertizing a car, describing some of its features but without showing it. And besides, there are other European countries out there, othen than the UK, with much more population and/or importance (Germany, France, Spain, Italy and so on).

@westman98 Well, I wouldn’t be so sure. Spain has almost 50 million citizens, and Italy has 60+ million (which is 5 or so million less than France and the UK). Not saying Nintendo is doing any better there as I don’t have numbers (and EU in general is a very Nontendo-unfriendly market), but I’d say it isn’t wise to count such big countries.

@Fight_Teza_Fight why not check the monthly chart. You will see a different story. Skyrim Switch peaked at number 6 while the ps4 skyrim bundle was 1 of the highest recent climbers and only recently surpassed the Switch version on the hourly charts.

@kobashi100 examples?

@electrolite77
France:
http://www.sell.fr/
Weekly Top 5 SKUs + Top 3 SKUs for each platform

Germany:
https://www.biu-online.de/marktdaten/
Monthly Top 20 sellers

Italy:
http://www.aesvi.it/index.php
Weekly Top 10 SKUs

Switzerland:
http://swisscharts.com/games_system.asp?system=Total
Weekly Top 10 sellers + Top 10 SKUs for each platform

Nordic:
http://www.k-2.dk/top10/
Weekly Top 10 sellers

Australia + New Zealand:
http://www.igea.net/
Weekly Top 10 sellers

@electrolite77 This is a UK based site? I see € (euro) prices everywhere on this site. Therefore, it certainly is not a UK based site.

Don't care about charts. Bought a switch, bought doom, still playing it, Nuff said

I love this site but it's well know the UK doesn't give a crap about Nintendo. So i would never take sales there as an indicator as how well something is doing.

@electrolite77 Yeap. You got it right.

Nintendo Life may be a UK registered site but it is devoted to its Nintendo fans worlwide and that is why you have American and European Direct and e-shop articles and that is why you also have English pounds, American dollars and European euros side by side.

Same as Nintendo, which is a registered Japanese company but caters for its fans no matter where on this planet they live.

@electrolite77
Lol, yep compelling evidence that, great logic. Maybe he knows something we dont

the difference between place 26 and 21 in the UK is probably just a couple dozen units.

It was good ,i’ll Give it that but I wasn’t expecting a chart topper

@Anti-Matter Something must be up. This article has Slig written all over it.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE Bruh. Where are you. I'm lonely.

Everyone has different tastes, but I just do not understand the appeal of so-called VR. I don't find wearing a screen on my face to be an immersive or enjoyable experience. Especially considering all the equipment you need to set it all up.

Pokemon always sells well, and this is just an updated version of Sun and Moon, which were great games. Though I really think there is little excuse for this sort of "improved version" in 2017. Ultra Sun and Moon could have(in my opinion SHOULD have) been an Ultra DLC for 10-15 dollars, rather than a full re-release. They could have also release hard copies of the games at the stores, like they did with Animal Crossing New Leaf: Welcome Amiibo.

@PlywoodStick Maybe he's actually gone outside.

@electrolite77 Yep. Aside from the obvious sexism (which could be charitably written off as very immature childish humour) Zelda just wasn't a trash talking skill based type of game. Advertising Street Fighter like that? O.K. But not a game like Zelda. They just didn't understand what they had.

The Mario 64 advert was actually even worse. A once in a lifetime never to be repeated leap forward into a genuinely new space and they added a tag line "not bad for an old timer". They might as well have said "there you go Sony - there's your narrative: Nintendo rehashes old IP that's simultaneously aimed at kids and stodgily old fashioned".

There are some words that should never be used in advertising and "old" is very near the top.

In my mind I can imagine the 90's Sony UK marketing team sitting in their office around the TV whenever Nintendo released a new advert before laughing and high five-ing each other and pulling out a £50 note while lining up some "powder" on the table... "hey guys lining up this 'snow' on the table has given me a great idea for advertising Cool Boarders".