Sea of Thieves sails to No.1 in UK charts

Despite four new games in the Top Five, it's not been a very strong week for the UK boxed games industry.

Data tracker GfK revealed that the six new games in the entire Top 40 this week sold fewer units than the single new release that arrived in the charts this time last year, which was Mass Effect Andromeda.

But the data doesn't paint the full picture.

Take, for instance, the No.1 game - Sea of Thieves. The Rare title was an online-only game for PC and Xbox One, so will likely have had a slightly higher digital weighting compared with non-online titles (remember, GfK data does not include download numbers). In addition, for those that utilise the free Xbox Game Pass trial, they can play the game for a period of time for free. What will be a test is whether the numbers remain healthy beyond the launch window when that free trial comes to an end.

Sea of Thieves is Rare's second No.1 in a row, following 2015's Rare Replay. The previous time the acclaimed UK studio topped the charts was in 1998 with Banjo-Kazooie.

The No.2 game of the week, also a new IP, was A Way Out by EA. The game is also an online title, and also featured a free trial option where gamers could play the title for free if a friend owned it. Once again, it'll be interested to see if those free trials turn into game sales further down the line.

Other new titles in the charts includes Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom by Bandai Namco, which made No.3 in the charts. The PS4 and PC game was the second highest grossing game of the week. Partially due to the lower price of A Way Out, but also because of the high cost and popularity of Ni No Kuni's special edition. Roughly a third of the game's sales were of the £140 SKU.

The fourth new game at No.4 is the remastered and current generation version of Assassin's Creed Rogue for PS4 and Xbox One.

Other new titles include Koei Tecmo's A.O.T 2 (Attack On Titan) at No.17 and Detective Pikachu on 3DS at No.23.

The result of all the new releases means that last week's No.1 EA's Burnout Paradise Remastered takes a tumble to No.6, although sales only dropped by 46%. Along with FIFA at No.5 and UFC 3 at No.8, there were four EA games in the Top Ten.

Kirby Star Allies, the Nintendo Switch title which reached No.2 last week, dropped 52% in sales and fell out of the Top Ten at No.11.

Here is the UKIE/GfK Top Ten for the week ending March 24th.