The Division 2 launch sales down 80% on first game in UK charts

Ubisoft’s new open world shooter seems to be off to a slow start in the new top 10, as One Piece: World Seeker struggles.

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There was never any question about The Division 2 being number one this week, but once again it’s the magnitude of a game’s success that’s the big question.

First week sales of The Division 2 were just 20% that of its predecessor, despite it having been released just three years ago.

Although last week’s Devil May Cry 5 bucked the trend it’s become a familiar story, to see a major drop in sales for new sequels, with much of the decrease attributed to the rise of digital downloads.

The Division 2’s drop is particularly steep, even accepting that it’s an online-focused game, but without the context of digital sales numbers it’s impossible to tell exactly what’s going on, even if it’s hard to imagine digital sales making up such a major shortfall.

As it was, the PlayStation 4 version of The Division 2 accounted for 60% of all sales, with the PC version rounding down to 0% when it comes to physical sales.

Devil May Cry 5 saw a major drop in sales of 76% from its debut, which is a lot but not unexpected for a relatively niche title.

Retailer discounts, especially for Rockstar Games titles, accounted for a lot of the other movement in the charts this week but The Lego Movie 2 Videogame’s jump is due to the belated release of the Nintendo Switch version at retail – although it was still outsold by Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

The only other genuine new entry was One Piece: World Seeker, which came in at number 28 in the all formats chart and saw the PlayStation 4 version peak at number 39 in the individual formats chart.

This week’s only major new retail release is Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice on Friday, but while FromSoftware’s new game may be keenly anticipated by gamers it will still find it difficult to dethrone the more mainstream The Division 2.

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