UK CHARTS: Retail discounts see Skyrim fly to No.1

Fierce retail price cutting has put Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls V at the top of the UK charts this week.

Data from GfK/Chart-Track for the week ending Saturday, September 10th shows that the game on average dropped 13 across the High Street last week.

A hugely popular deal at Gamestation saw the game chopped to 22.99 mid-week, and the supermarkets soon followed suit.

The Gamestation deal was heavily promoted on TV. Amazon pricematched, and is still selling it at 22.49. One chain even briefly sold it for under 20.

The game originally debuted five weeks ago at No.2 in the chart, and managed to secure a generous chunk of the ‘Modern Warfare week’ which saw a new Call of Duty barrel onto the scene.

With the Call of Duty fever dying, and retail eyeing an opportunity, it’s no wonder the game made it to the top of the charts. Retail sales for the large-scale open world RPG were up 145 per cent week on week.

That means Modern Warfare 3 is No.2 – although sales for the game are down just seven per cent.

It’s seeing pressure from below, too: Just Dance 3 is up a place. Ubisoft’s game has seen a jump of 67 per cent in week on week sales. Chart Track says the most popular SKU is on Wii, which accounts for 89 per cent of the game’s sales. The PS3 version only just came out last week.

FIFA 12 dropped to fourth, but its sales were also up week on week, by 24 per cent.

Price cutting and deals also meant good things for Uncharted 3, which has reentered the top ten at No.9. The PS3 game is part of a hardware bundle deal Sony has arranged with many retailers. Sales of the action adventure rose 81 per cent week.
Battlefield 3, also part of the bundle, was up 30 per cent sales wise and climbed three places to No.6.

The full top ten can be found below – we’ll be updating the detailed single format charts here on MCV shortly.

THE UK TOP TEN IN FULL:
1. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda) +145%
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Activision) -7%
3. Just Dance 3 (Ubisoft) +67%
4. FIFA 12 (Electronic Arts) +24%
5. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (Ubisoft) -5%
6. Battlefield 3 (Electronic Arts) +30%
7. Professor Layton and the Spectre’s Call (Nintendo) +5%
8. Saints Row: The Third (THQ) -2%
9. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (SCE UK) +81%
10. Mario Kart 7 (Nintendo) -1%