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UK March 2024: Helldivers 2 #1, Dragon's Dogma 2 #3, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth #5 (Read Staff Communications)

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www.gamesindustry.biz

Helldivers 2 drives UK March game sales up 26% | UK Monthly Charts

3.65 million PC and console games were sold across the UK during March, an impressive rise of 26% over the same period …
www.gamesindustry.biz www.gamesindustry.biz
Overall
  • Software - 3.65 million (up 26% from 2023)
  • Hardware - 117k (up 22% from Feb, down 15% from 2023)
    • PS5 - up 25% from Feb, down 9% from 2023
    • Switch - up 20% from Feb, down 20% from 2023
    • Xbox Series - Narrowly misses 2nd place - up 19% from Feb, down 18% from 2023
  • Accessories - 732,584 - up 19% from Feb, down 18% from 2023
Software
  • Helldivers 2 takes the No. 1 position for the second month in a row. In terms of units, it is now trending ahead of Spider-Man 2 for each title's first 8 weeks.
  • Dragon's Dogma 2 narrowly takes the lead over Final Fantasy VII Rebirth at No. 3 with FF7R at No. 5. This is despite Final Fantasy being tracked for the whole month while Dragon's Dogma 2 is only for 2 weeks.
  • WWE 2K24 fits into No. 4 with sales 8% higher than 2K23.
  • Command & Conquer flooded the rankings due to their Steam release and a special 17 title bundle. The series has 10 games in the top 20 with 2 (Generals and Red Alert 2) in the top 10
  • Due to the Command & Conquer bundle, new titles like Rise of the Ronin (No. 21) and Princess Peach: Showtime (No.30) are lower ranked than what they typically would be.
Accessories
The biggest accessory is the Dualsense Midnight Black while the DualSense White drops to 3rd. DualSense Starlight Blue rose to 6th from 19th. The Playstation Portal is up 6 places to 8th and the Xbox Astral Purple Controller jumped 9 places to No. 9
In terms of Mice and keyboards, the market has been doing well with the Mice market dominated by Logitech, including products such as the G502, G305 and G203. For keyboards, the Trust GXT-830 and GXT-865 and the Logitech G213 lead the month of March, followed by respectable growth for Steelseries and the Apex Pro keyboards.

PositionTitle
1Helldivers 2 (Sony)
2EA Sports FC 24 (EA)
3Dragon's Dogma 2 (Capcom)
4WWE 2K24 (2K Games)
5Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (Square Enix)
6Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege (Ubisoft)
7Command & Conquer: Generals (EA)
8Grand Theft Auto 5 (Rockstar)
9Hogwarts Legacy (Warner Bros)
10Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 (EA)

January Thread
February Thread
 
3.65 million PC and console games were sold across the UK during March, an impressive rise of 26% over the same period in 2023.

GSD data, which tracks all physical sales and digital sales from most major publishers, reveals that for a second consecutive month, Sony's Helldivers 2 was the best-selling video game.

After eight weeks, the game's sales are now trending ahead of where Spider-Man 2 (Sony's last big release) was after the same length of time. They are, of course, very different games, with Spider-Man 2 retailing at £70 and only releasing on PS5. Helldivers 2 has a lower price and is also available on PC.

Needless to say, the new game is showing impressive legs and continues to place near the top of the charts each week.

It was the battle of the Japanese RPGs during March with Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (technically released in February, but part of the March data) and Dragon's Dogma 2 both coming to market. The result? A narrow success for Dragon's Dogma 2, which debuts at No.3 in this month's chart, while Final Fantasy VII Rebirth comes in at No.4. There isn't a huge amount in it, but it's worth noting that Dragon's Dogma 2 had only been on the market for two weeks when this data was counted.

Sandwiched between the two RPGs is WWE 2K24, which has had a stronger start to life than last year's game. After four weeks, 2K24's sales are 8% higher than what 2K23 managed.

Absolutely flooding the charts this week are Command & Conquer titles, which was part of a 17-title bundle released on Steam during March. Two of the games (Generals and Red Alert 2) make the Top Ten, with ten games in total in the Top 20.

As a result, new releases like Rise of Ronin (No.21) and Princess Peach: Showtime (No.30) are lower down the charts than they would have been.

Games hardware continues to fall year-on-year

Meanwhile, just over 117,000 games consoles were sold in the UK during March, GfK panel data shows.

It's a rise of 22% over February, but down 15% over March last year.

As we've said in previous months, PS5 became fully available this time last year, which caused a significant boost to sales, so comparisons this year were always likely to be tough. We're also into the eighth year on the market for Nintendo Switch, which is starting to show its age.

PS5 sales are up 25% over February, but down 9% over March last year. Sony's console is comfortably No.1 for the month.

Nintendo Switch sales are up 20% month-on-month, but down 20% year-on-year. While narrowly missing out on second place is Xbox Series S and X, which is up 19% over the month before, but down 18% year-on-year.

www.gamesindustry.biz

Helldivers 2 drives UK March game sales up 26% | UK Monthly Charts

3.65 million PC and console games were sold across the UK during March, an impressive rise of 26% over the same period …
www.gamesindustry.biz www.gamesindustry.biz
 
Dragon's Dogma 2 narrowly takes the lead over Final Fantasy VII Rebirth at No. 3 with FF7R at No. 5. This is despite Final Fantasy being tracked for the whole month while Dragon's Dogma 2 is only for 2 weeks.
Click to expand...
What a weird comparison.
Rebirth launched in February and was heavy front loaded.

Oh, nvm, gsd counts FF7R as march release.
Yikes then.
 
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The C&C bundle seems like it matters more to contextualize a low debut on the charts for a game like Peach, which released in a crowded opening week, underneath the now standard retail pricing of PS5/XS games, and had no digital sales accounted for. The game's held better over the last few weeks compared to the competition as well, so I think for a game like that, a low chart opening is fully understandable.

With Ronin I feel even with the C&C bundle for added context it doesn't look good; it's all the way down to 23rd in last week's physical chart and we know K-T has really high expectation for the game. It seems to be doing good for itself in Japan at least.
 
Lelouch0612 said:
Exceptional success from Helldivers.

DD2 bigger than FF7Rebirth definitely embodies the different momentums between Capcom and Square.
Click to expand...
I wonder if we will be able to estimate FF7R sales at this point.
Capcom usually have a relatively decent digital split so I guess it did sell well digitall if it is already not doing that bad physically. Though personally I expected more from DD2.
 
Astrogamer said:
Dragon's Dogma 2 narrowly takes the lead over Final Fantasy VII Rebirth at No. 3 with FF7R at No. 5. This is despite Final Fantasy being tracked for the whole month while Dragon's Dogma 2 is only for 2 weeks.
Click to expand...
DD2 sweep! It probably will have bad legs but I'm certainly not as worried about its sales as before. Itsuno the God. Now he's gonna make a new Rival Schools right?
 
GodlyTrident said:
I wonder if we will be able to estimate FF7R sales at this point.
Capcom usually have a relatively decent digital split so I guess it did sell well digitall if it is already not doing that bad physically. Though personally I expected more from DD2.
Click to expand...
I would expect DD2 to have a higher share of PC sales than most other Capcom games, the franchise was basically revived by the Dark Arisen release on PC.
About FF7R sales I wouldn't dare estimate...

EDIT: Meant to edit my previous post. doh
 
Helldivers is just showing off at this point lol.
Great success for Dragon's Dogma 2.
 
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Unbelievable success for Helldivers and very impressive PS5 hardware.

Rebirth isn't great, DD2 shouldn't be beating it with half the time being counted.

Ronin is not good at all.
 
Xevross said:
Unbelievable success for Helldivers and very impressive PS5 hardware.

Rebirth isn't great, DD2 shouldn't be beating it with half the time being counted.

Ronin is not good at all.
Click to expand...

Ronin likely have sold through ~500k WW. IMO they should have released it in January.
 
Wow, I definitely would not have picked PS5 to have the lowest percentage YoY hardware drop for March considering that was still when the PS5 was becoming fully available to the market and it had that crazy high fiscal fourth quarter.
 
Megiddo said:
Wow, I definitely would not have picked PS5 to have the lowest percentage YoY hardware drop for March considering that was still when the PS5 was becoming fully available to the market and it had that crazy high fiscal fourth quarter.
Click to expand...

It’s basically carrying the UK console market at this point
 
Megiddo said:
Wow, I definitely would not have picked PS5 to have the lowest percentage YoY hardware drop for March considering that was still when the PS5 was becoming fully available to the market and it had that crazy high fiscal fourth quarter.
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Indeed, seriously impressive for PS5. There were some discounts but xbox had the same ones iirc.

Astral_lion02 said:
Actual hardware compared to this post:


Princess Peach: Showtime sold 8k at launch in the UK.
This game's sales are decent but not well reflected in this chart due to C&C games.

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View hidden content is available for registered users!
 
I'm surprised at how the PS5 is holding up.
The drop compared to 2023 is not big at all.

I imagine the recent changes to Xbox's strategy are making people opt for PlayStation.
 


"Oh, by a small margin. Spider-Man 2 exploded out of the gate and then slowed down. Helldivers 2 grew over February and only slowed down a bit in March."
 
  • Helldivers 2 takes the No. 1 position for the second month in a row. In terms of units, it is now trending ahead of Spider-Man 2 for each title's first 8 weeks.
that's crazy given the incredible hype spiderman receives
 
If someone said at the end of last year that HellDivers 2 would be more important than Spiderman 2 and FF Rebirth for the year 2024 I would call them crazy.

Sony has achieved a strong franchise with a lot of growth potential. Perhaps a version for XBOX and even Switch 2 is possible.
 
Hopefully Sony looks at HD2 for how you can monetize their other GAAS games instead of only looking at Destiny 2's model.

I assume we will see Concord in May.
 
Astral_lion02 said:
Actual hardware compared to this post:


Princess Peach: Showtime sold 8k at launch in the UK.
This game's sales are decent but not well reflected in this chart due to C&C games.

*** Hidden text: cannot be quoted. ***
Click to expand...
View hidden content is available for registered users!
 
We know SM2 EoY sales, ~650K, which is roughly 10-11 weeks on the market.
HD2 should be in 8 weeks, 550K+ imo

Whats incredible is SM2 legs were helped by the holiday season. This is Q1 and HD2 is performing like the holiday season.
800K-1M end of year I think.

PS5's 66K is also incredible when you realise Q1 2023 was globally the all time highest Q1 in gaming history. PS5 is only down -15% from the Q.
 
enpleinjour said:
We know SM2 EoY sales, ~650K, which is roughly 10-11 weeks on the market.
HD2 should be in 8 weeks, 550K+ imo

Whats incredible is SM2 legs were helped by the holiday season. This is Q1 and HD2 is performing like the holiday season.
800K-1M end of year I think.

PS5's 66K is also incredible when you realise Q1 2023 was globally the all time highest Q1 in gaming history. PS5 is only down -15% from the Q.
Click to expand...

Europe seems to be holding well. I forget about US of its slightly down but Japan seems to be the only one down alot by the quarter. Not sure where else but UK is holding nicely
 
Tbone5189 said:
Europe seems to be holding well. I forget about US of its slightly down but Japan seems to be the only one down alot by the quarter. Not sure where else but UK is holding nicely
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Yes, the PS5 is performing very well in US and Europe, with sales down much less than expected. Unfortunately, the situation is not the same in Japan, where sales have been halved compared to last year.
 
Very impressive for Helldivers 2, launch on PC alongside PS5 was spot on. Rise of the Ronin in the other hand is doing pretty poorly.

On hardware PS5 is doing well with smaller drop that I was expecting.
 
allan-bh said:
Very impressive for Helldivers 2, launch on PC alongside PS5 was spot on.
Click to expand...

Co-op PvE shooters have historically been very good performers on PC.
I don't know if the gap between PC vs PS5 has widen in March compared to its launch month(in the UK, but also elsewhere) but a lot more people are generally playing on PC vs PS5 at this point in the game's life.

Steam right now: 161,524
Total player count: 239k

PC more than double PS5.
Edit: Note that Steam CCUs count those who have the game launched, but are not actively engaged on the battlefield.

But it was always the correct move to have all their GaaS games come to PC.
You've got to reach the biggest audience you can and then monetize them.

I'm sure PlayStation would prefer a more favourable split on PS5 where they don't have to deal with the Valve cut, but that's how it is.
 
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Kowalski said:
Yes, the PS5 is performing very well in US and Europe, with sales down much less than expected. Unfortunately, the situation is not the same in Japan, where sales have been halved compared to last year.
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It's because of the aggressive discounts they've done in the US and Europe. They can't do those in Japan due to the yen tanking, which also has the knock on effect of depressing exports. It is surprising that they are doing the discounts, but at the same time they probably don't want to miss their forecast again and they probably didn't want to set the second one too low.
 
Evilnemesis8 said:
Co-op PvE shooters have historically been very good performers on PC.
I don't know if the gap between PC vs PS5 has widen in March compared to its launch month(in the UK, but also elsewhere) but a lot more people are generally playing on PC vs PS5 at this point in the game's life.

Steam right now: 161,524
Total player count: 239k

PC more than double PS5.

But it was always the correct move to have all their GaaS games come to PC.
You've got to reach the biggest audience you can and then monetize them.

I'm sure PlayStation would prefer a more favourable split on PS5 where they don't have to deal with the Valve cut, but that's how it is.
Click to expand...

Steam player count is not total active player count.
 
enpleinjour said:
Steam player count is not total active player count.
Click to expand...

I am aware that the Steam player count includes those running the game but are not actively on planets.
Realized not everyone was aware so I edited the previous post.
 
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HD2 is just a wild success at this point, one of the breakout games this gen. Think we’re going to be seeing a lot of games trying to follow up its success.

PS5 doing really well and switch holding reasonably considering its age. Xbox is just doing really badly, for what is one of the only markets Xbox performs decently in these numbers aren’t great.
 
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