Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has beaten Black Ops Cold War to the number one spot for boxed sales in the UK during both games’ debut weeks.
Last week was a big one for the gaming industry. It marked the worldwide release of the Xbox Series X and Series S, and also the release of the PS5 in certain parts of the world. On top of that, some very big games also hit the market. The type of games that would normally try to avoid each other’s release dates, but wanted to make the most of the next-gen consoles becoming available.
The two biggest games released alongside the launch of the next generation were Assassins Creed Valhalla and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Ubisoft and Activision had to put more work into these titles than they normally would. That’s because both were not only released on the new consoles, but also the last ones.
Activision releases a new CoD game at around the same time every year, of course, and has done for the majority of this century. For the past 13 years in the UK, those games have comfortably taken the number one spot during their debut week when accounting for physical sales. However, Valhalla has managed to bring an end to that streak, perhaps marking a changing of the guard for this coming generation of console.
As reported by Gamesindustry.biz, Valhalla clinched the number one spot in the UK charts for physical sales last week. 42% of its sales were on PS4, 18% on PS5, and the remaining 40% across all three Xbox consoles on which Valhalla is available. The reason its PS5 sales are so slow is due to the fact that the UK is one of the parts of the world where the new console isn’t released until later this week.
There are a couple of caveats that Activision will point toward, of course. First of all, the final numbers for last week’s digital sales have not been released yet. However, Activision Blizzard’s EMEAA MD Anna Malmhake claims the game’s digital sales are the highest launch day numbers in franchise history. Valhalla was also released three days before Black Ops Cold War. It still beat the new CoD game to number one though, and also had twice as many day one players as its predecessor, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
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