Spider-Man 2 beats Super Mario Bros Wonder to No.1 | UK Physical Charts

Updated: Due to some double counting on Spider-Man 2, we've updated the story with the correct % figures. Previously, we stated Spider-Man 2 is the biggest PS5 launch of the year (it's now Hogwarts Legacy), and that sales were 3% lower than God of War Ragnarok (it was 27% lower).

Spider-Man 2 beat out competition from Super Mario to claim No.1 in the UK boxed retail charts, GfK data reveals.

The PlayStation 5 exclusive had a strong launch. It is the second biggest PS5 boxed launch of the year, just behind the PS5 lauch of Hogwarts Legacy back in February.

Spider-Man 2's launch sales are just over 27% lower than the PS5 launch of God of War Ragnarok, which was the biggest PlayStation launch of all time when it arrived last year. Of course, this is purely physical sales, so we will have to wait until digital comes in to find out which game comes out top. Note: God of War Ragnarok launched on a Wednesday, whereas Spider-Man 2 arrived on Friday, so last year's title had a few extra days on sale.

Spider-Man 2 is the fourth biggest boxed game launch of the year, behind Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, EA Sports FC24 and Hogwarts Legacy.

Compared with Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which released on PS4 and PS5 in 2020, boxed launch sales of Spider-Man 2 are 29% higher. When looking at the original Spider-Man, the new game's sales are 43% lower. The original Spider-Man was released in 2018, and digital downloading has accelerated significantly since then. Again, we will have to wait for the download data to come in to see how it truly compares.

The success of Spider-Man 2 means that the darling of the physical games market, Nintendo, had to settle for No.2 with its big launch of Super Mario Bros Wonder.

It was still a great launch for Nintendo. The game's sales are slightly ahead of New Super Mario Bros Wii, which was released in 2009, making it the biggest 2D Mario game launch in UK history. In fact, it's only narrowly behind Super Mario Odyssey (2017) and Super Mario 3D All-Stars (2020) in the list of the biggest Mario platform game launches of all time.

Mario games, particularly the 2D ones, tend to be more longer-term sellers. Although the launch of Mario Bros Wonder is strong, it hasn't come close to matching the new Zelda or Pokémon games – Wonder's launch sales are 62% lower than Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, for example. However, you should expect it to hang around for months to come.

Super Mario Bros Wonder is the fifth biggest boxed game release of the year.

The next new game in the charts is Sonic Superstars at No.4. It's not entirely clear why Sega decided to launch a 2D Sonic game the same week as a 2D Mario game, especially considering the character's popularity on Nintendo Switch. In fact, even with the Mario competition, the majority of Sonic Superstars' sales were on Switch (49% of all boxed games sold), followed by PS5 (34%), Xbox (10%) and then PS4 (6%).

Compared with last year's 3D Sonic game, Sonic Frontiers (which was clearly a much bigger budget release), launch sales of Superstars is down 63%. Expect the new game to feature during Black Friday later next month, which may well have been the plan all along.

The only other new release this week is Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged, which crosses the line at No.32.

Pricing activity boosted a few games this week, with Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt GOTY Edition jumping from No.47 to No.13 with a 144% sales increase, while Mortal Kombat 11 re-enters at No.16 with a 863% sales leap.

With the launch of Spider-Man and Mario, EA Sports FC 24's three-week stay at the top of the charts ended. The football game fell to No.3 with a 53% sales drop week-on-week (it'll be back). Meanwhile, Assassin's Creed Mirage slips to No.5 with a 49% sales drop.

Meanwhile, last week's Lords of the Fallen slips from No.4 to No.18 with a 70% sales fall.

Here is the GfK Boxed Top Ten for this week ending October 21, 2023:

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