Red Dead Redemption 2 records biggest Week Two of any title this year

Red Dead Redemption 2 looks to have plenty of stamina, as it posted the biggest second week sales of any title this year. With a fall in sales of only 51 per cent on its huge opening week, it outdid FIFA 19’s second week tally by a considerable 19 per cent.

With pre-launch anticipation for the title at fever pitch, having dominated pre-orders for months, it was possible that the game was going to fly high before falling fast. Such fears have been wiped out, largely thanks to the sheer quality of the game, resulting in incredible review scores, and also a solid Twitch following, with the title constantly sitting high in the top ten on the service.

Sony’s marketing campaign around the game certainly helped at launch, but in the last week the biggest console saw a bigger dip, 54 per cent in sales, compared to the Xbox One, 45 per cent. It’s not an unusual pattern in this generation admittedly, though in this case it’s most probably due to the extra marketing spend around the PS4 version of the game.

This week also saw two big re-releases on Nintendo Switch. Diablo III: Eternal Collection lets you play the 2012 game on the move (and with considerable less hoo-hah than Blizzard’s announcement of a mobile Diablo game). It charted at No.15 with 98 per cent of sales on Switch this week. Though it’s still a tiny percentage of the 30m odd copies of the game sold to date of course!

The Lego Harry Potter Collection also came to Switch, but was also released on Xbox One as well, coming in at number No.8 from Warner Bros. Sales were evenly split between the two new formats, although attention from the launch even let the PS4 version pick up, with 17 per cent of sales.

One notable oddity was the appearance of a PC-only title in the physical Top 10 – Football Manager 2019 in the No.9 spot. We can’t recall the last time we saw this, and while it’s probably a tiny fraction of what it’s done digitally, it’s still a testament to the popularity of the franchise to break into the retail charts like this.