For Honor and GTA V come out top in quiet February for UK games retail

For Honor was the UK's best-selling boxed game in February, mirroring its success in the US.

GfK figures show that GTA V was snapping at its heels at No.2, continuing that game's remarkable ability to keep selling. The only other new games to crack the Top Ten sales charts was Sniper Elite 4 (No.6), Hitman: The Complete First Season (No.9) and Nioh (No.10).

Just over 1m games were sold, which is ten per cent down on the previous February. Month-on-month analysis can be challenging in this business, especially when you consider that February 2016 featured a slightly stronger release slate of Street Fighter V and Far Cry Primal.

The performance of Horizon: Zero Dawn, Ghost Recon Wildlands and Nintendo Switch (plus Zelda) suggests that March will be a significantly stronger period for the physical retail space.

As a result of the success of For Honor, Ubisoft was February's No.1 games publisher, just ahead of Electronic Arts in terms of units. Take-Two (because of GTA V) and Capcom (due to Resident Evil 7) continue to perform well and benefitting from a lack of new games in the marketplace.

However, Microsoft will be disappointed with the physical performance or Halo Wars 2 - although it would certainly have done better as the PC version will have predominantly been sold digitally.