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As we bet last week, Ubisoft’s Far Cry New Dawn won the battle of the charts this week, debuting at No.1.
Sales for the spin-off were down 86.5 per cent compared to the latest entry in the franchise, 2018’s Far Cry 5. Of course, it’s a bit unfair to compare New Dawn to a fully fledged entry. Far Cry Primal would be a fairer comparison, though it’s doesn’t paint a better picture of New Dawn, as Week One sales for the title were down 73.2 per cent compared to launch sales for Primal.
But there’s a reason for that: the wealth of triple-A titles hitting shelves last week, with one in particular doing extremely well. Deep Silver’s Metro Exodus debuted at No.2 and was very very close to Far Cry New Dawn – it sold just ten per cent less copies than Ubisoft’s title, is actually No.1 in terms of revenue and broke records compared to previous entries in the series. Metro Exodus’ launch sales were up 47 per cent compared to Week One sales for 2013’s Metro Last Light, up 15 per cent compared to 2010’s Metro 2033 and up 20.9 per cent compared to 2014’s remastered collection of the first two entries – Metro Redux. It’s very rare these days to see a new entry in a franchise doing better than the previous one at retail due to the infamous digital shift, making Metro Exodus’ performance even more impressive.
Meanwhile, Bandai Namco’s Jump Force debuted at No.4 as Red Dead Redemption held on to No.3 with a 23 per cent increase in sales week-on-week.
Microsoft’s Crackdown 3 debuted outside of the Top Ten and had to settle for No.13 to underwhelming sales, which are down 89 per cent compared to launch sales for 2010’s Crackdown 2. Some of that will be down to the digital shift, but most of it is likely due to the title’s troubled development journey and its lukewarm reception.
Here’s the Top Ten for the week ending on February 16th (data courtesy of GfK/Ukie):
To keep an eye on what’s releasing when, don’t forget to take a look at our release schedule, updated weekly.
