God of War rages into No.1 after another bad week for UK retail

God of War rages into No.1 in this weeks Top Ten, although Sony may well be feeling like the sales of the seventh game in the franchise is underwhelming,

The game sold less copies than Far Cry 5’s opening week last month, and sold less than Horizon Zero Dawn, which launched in a similar window in 2017. It’s hard to compare the two exactly, as Horizon reviewed similarly to God of War and was Sony’s big first-party exclusive for Q1 2017.

Far Cry 5 was being sold on both the Xbox One, and PS4 however.

However God of War did have a few special circumstances that could have directly impacted its boxed sales: Amazon wasn’t selling the game in the run up to its launch, which could have pushed fans towards digital or to wait.

Also, the weather this weekend was unseasonable warm, meaning potential players might have chosen to go outside and eat an ice cream instead of picking up Kratos’s latest god-punch-’em-up.

With these factors in the mix, and the strength of the reviews, it wouldn’t be too shocking if the game’s week two drop in sales was less than we’ve seen with other titles. We’ll come back to this next week. As it stands though, it’s a depressing return for Sony’s huge franchise, in a week when pretty much every game in the Top Ten has seen a drop in sales of between 20-40 per cent on last week’s sales.

In other angry father figure news, Sega’s Yakuza 6 is the second new entry into the top 40 charts this week, sliding into No.3 behind Far Cry 5 and becoming the biggest launch in the franchise so far in the UK, beating 2017’s Yakuza Kiwami, the entry in the franchise that previously held the Yakuza shaped crown.

We’ve teased enough. Have some charts. These boxed charts are for the week ending April 21st. (Data courtesy of GfK/Ukie)