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A long-awaited change was made to the Europe-wide GSD charts this week. The charts have added value rankings to their weekly reports, as requested by MCV, providing us with a far better idea of what titles are really making the money. These charts provide digital-only, retail-only and combined data.
The issue up to now was that sales of digital titles were hard to analyse, as the vast pricing disparities in digital meant that unit data was next to meaningless. Taking last week (W3 2019) as an example the No.1 best-selling digital title in Europe by unit sales was Just Cause 3 – heavily discounted.
But look at the value data and that title slumps down to a lowly No.32, with Bandai Namco’s Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown shooting up from a fairly anonymous No.9 to its rightful place in the top spot.
In short, with digital charts it’s value that matters, not unit sales.
The GSD data now incorporates UK retail data as well, making its combined digital and physical value charts the best tool we have for tracking who is making money from selling premium titles across the region.
The only major issue being a lack of digital data from Nintendo. With a secondary concern being that only major publishers are represented, so breakout indie hits won’t appear.
That aside, here are the top 10 digital titles by value across Europe for the week 14/01/2019 to 20/01/2019. The breadth of the data means GSD’s reports comes at the end of the week following, so it’ll be another week before we see Resident Evil 2’s chart impact for instance.
EUROPEAN TOP 10 DIGITAL BY VALUE (14/01/2019 to 20/01/2019)
NO.1 – ACE COMBAT 7: SKIES UNKNOWN PS4, XBOX ONE BANDAI NAMCO
NO.2 – GRAND THEFT AUTO V PC, PS3, PS4, XBOX 360, XBOX ONE ROCKSTAR GAMES
NO.3 – RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 PS4, XBOX ONE ROCKSTAR GAMES
NO.4 – CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS 4 PC, PS4, XBOX ONE ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
NO.5 – TOM CLANCY’S RAINBOW SIX SIEGE PC, PS4, XBOX ONE UBISOFT
NO.6 – ASSASSIN’S CREED ORIGINS PC, PS4, XBOX ONE UBISOFT
NO.7 – EA SPORTS UFC 3 PS4, XBOX ONE ELECTRONIC ARTS
NO.8 – FIFA 19 PC, PS3, PS4, SWITCH, XBOX 360, XBOX ONE ELECTRONIC ARTS
NO.9 – NEED FOR SPEED: PAYBACK PC, PS4, XBOX ONE ELECTRONIC ARTS
NO.10 – FAR CRY 5 PC, PS4, XBOX ONE UBISOFT
Moving over to the combined charts for Europe, that’s physical and digital by value in this case. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown again tops the charts, with all the predictable big hitters taking a spot: EA, Rockstar/Take-Two and Activision all feature at least once.
We can also see just what a powerhouse Nintendo is, with four titles in the Top 10. The company is both shifting units consistently and retaining high prices on them while doing so. And this is all without digital sales being considered!
EUROPEAN TOP 10 COMBINED BY VALUE (14/01/2019 to 20/01/2019)
NO.1 – ACE COMBAT 7: SKIES UNKNOWN PS4, XBOX ONE BANDAI NAMCO
NO.2 – NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. U DELUXE SWITCH NINTENDO
NO.3 – FIFA 19 PC, PS3, PS4, SWITCH, XBOX 360, XBOX ONE ELECTRONIC ARTS
NO.4 – RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 PS4, XBOX ONE ROCKSTAR GAMES
NO.5 – CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS 4 PC, PS4, XBOX ONE ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
NO.6 – GRAND THEFT AUTO V PC, PS3, PS4, XBOX 360, XBOX ONE ROCKSTAR GAMES
NO.7 – SUPER SMASH BROS. ULTIMATE SWITCH NINTENDO
NO.8 – MARIO KART 8 DELUXE SWITCH NINTENDO
NO.9 – BATTLEFIELD V PC, PS4, XBOX ONE ELECTRONIC ARTS
NO.10 – SUPER MARIO PARTY SWITCH NINTENDO
