The Evil Within 2 has sold less than a quarter of its predecessor’s physical launch total, making its commercial performance unquestionably the scariest thing about the survival horror sequel. The game – which we rather liked – will now be banking on Hallowe’en hype to make up the difference. It’s not the first Bethesda title to flop in recent times.
Despite its dreadful numbers, the game actually debuted in third position on the UK sales charts, which is perhaps indicative of the state of the British market right now. Middle-earth: Shadow of War finished in second, but also endured a decline in retail sales compared to Shadow of Mordor. It’s worth noting at this point that Chart-Track does not take into account digital purchases.
This all means that FIFA 18 once again topped the charts, with various evergreens rounding out the remainder of the top ten. It’s going to be fascinating to see how both South Park: The Fractured But Whole and Gran Turismo Sport fare next week – especially the latter, which will have its work cut out matching the success of previous entries in our opinion.
UK Sales Charts: Week Ending 14th October, 2017
- FIFA 18
- Middle-earth: Shadow of War
- The Evil Within 2
- Forza Motorsport 7
- Forza Horizon 3
- Destiny 2
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy
- LEGO Worlds
- The LEGO Ninjago Movie Video Game
[source chart-track.co.uk]
Comments 47
Who saw that one coming?!
Not too surprising I guess, given it launched on Friday and not Tuesday like it's predecessor. Plus all the usual factors. Let's try not to sound too happy if it doesn't do very well though, these kind of games (single player, story driven, no loot boxes) are the sort of experiences we all seem to be crying out for...
It could do well on XB1 X, too.
GT6 launched to sales of 55k in the U.K. after the PS4 released. Last week Forza 7 launched to under 30k.
Looking at preorder charts GT Sport should debut quite significantly above GT6. It's the first Gran Turismo on PS4 and is coming of a very well received demo and excellent technical analysis from Digital Foundry and NX Gamer.
@Jake66 I imagine it'll do similar numbers to GT6 personally. Sounds about right for where the market's at these days.
@Jake66 well received demo? the demo lead to me canceling my pre-order.
prey, dishonoured: DoTO, TEW 2.. bit of a trend with bethesda games lately, and won't be a huge surprise if wolfenstein has a similar fate too.
not just bethesda though, I'd be very surprised if battlefront 2 matches anything like the success of the first one. GT sport will flag well behind GT5. if anything, circumstantially, it looks as if another industry crash is coming..
@leucocyte Industry crash lol. No chance.
These sales reports get more and more pointless as more and more buy digital.
A big factor is all the choice these days. People can't all dog pile one game as it launches when there is so much choice.
I love the survival horror genre, but I have such a monumental backlog of games to play (and hardly any time to allocate to them) that I’ve purposely not bought TEW2.......though that’ll probably change before the week’s out.
@kyleforrester87
Have to agree with this statement. Until they start counting both digital and retail sales, the numbers are meaningless.
@McGuit @kyleforrester87
I agree but do you really think digital sales make up for THAT much difference? I'm sure sales are still putrid none the less.
@Gamer83 With this game in particular you have to consider digital sales plus a Friday release day when comparing it to the first one. Of course, it's not exactly a blinding game either, I won't pretend otherwise.
I do agree that Chart-Track is only going to decrease in relevance the longer they report this data without digital. It's definitely a huge missing component.
Having only just become a PS4 Owner Xmas 2017, I have been amazed at the amount of Quality Cut-Price Games in PSN Sales - Coupled to that the recent PSN Monthly Freebies also being of Good Quality and I have a Stack of yet to Play Games - I would like to Play Evil Within 2, but why buy now and add to the Stockpile, by the time I am ready to Play, then it will no doubt be in a PSN Sale.
@Templedoom Yeah, I imagine it's amazing for new owners these days. You can get a LOT of incredible games at very low prices.
@Templedoom Are you from the future!?
I think it's par for the course for this time of the year. Games cannibalize each other's sales and games will always struggle in the face of titles such as FIFA, GT, FORZA, Assassins Creed, COD and Destiny.
It's a real shame as the game looks to be really decent. I am busy with my own backlog at the moment and am hoping to resist buying any new games for a few months.
I already have old games queued up that I still haven't bought such as Hitman Season 1, The Surge, Sniper Elite 4, Prey and Yooka Laylee.
I think publishers need to be smarter about when they are releasing their games.
@Templedoom
A great position to be be in squire. I cannot recommend Bloodborne strongly enough, the game really does justify the hype, it's incredible.
Going to say this though, despite my thoughts on sales drops recently: Bethesda's marketing is awful. Prey, Death of the Outsider, and Evil Within 2 have suffered from some awful, awful pushes and very little ads wise.
When Deep Silver does more marketing than you, you have a problem.
Almost bought it this weekend, it was $30 on PC at a few places. But, I already have Shadow of War, Destiny 2, Cuphead, and definitely at least a dozen PS4 games to get through. Didn't really want another bought, unplayed game sitting in my library.
@Cassetticons Saw a pretty sweet wrap on one of the newer London busses for Wolfenstein yesterday. They should dress all busses up like that, forever.
Here, actually. Went all the way round the back, looked dope.
Hi Octane - To the best of my knowledge, not from the Future, I will need to ask my Mum (Linda Hamilton), not sure about Dad, as only knew him as T1000 - try tracking that down 'Who do you think you are'
@kyleforrester87 A BJ (Blazkowicz) on a bus. Nice.
@ApostateMage eyy!
@kyleforrester87 Whoa, that's nice! I guess the EW2 budget got spent on that? haha
Bethesda games drop so fast that I am not surprised. I also have a huge backlog so I dont need more games right now.
@manu0
Your loss then lol everywhere i looked people said it was an awesome demo.
@get2sammyb @kyleforrester87 - whilst i agree that chart-track not including digital numbers isn't giving the whole picture, i think there's a lot of people that have unrealistic expectations of (or pining their hopes on) digital sales in the UK. i'd expect UK physical sales to account for 75%+ of AAA console games, especially at launch. a 2 minute search, and i found TEW2 for £12 cheaper, Shadow of War for £16 cheaper, and FIFA 18 for £18 than their PSN/XBL equivalents. plus a majority of UK households still have broadband with usage caps, a couple of games can be 80-100Gbs of data.
even with digital having a bigger share, there's been a much larger increase in install base from 3 years ago, so in a healthier state of affairs, sales based solely chart-track should still see increases, but they're not. choice could be a large factor.. FIFA 18 arrived only a few weeks ago, and Mordor/TEW2 are having to contend with wolfenstein, GT sport, AC: origins, southpark (and that's just the big ones i can think of off the top of my head) this month, and CoD:WW2 and battlefront 2 arriving within less than a month from now.. if sales are spread thin across a lot of titles, it's going to make publishers retreat.. if wolfenstein crashes and burns, would it be a surprise if fallout 5 and elder scrolls vi become the main focus for bethesda?. what would it mean for the likes of tango gameworks and machine games?. no point pretending we haven't been here in the recent past, imo.
@leucocyte Yeah, I completely agree with this, too. Digital will make up some of the difference, but it's not making up for the kind of declines we've seen for many games this year.
@JoeBlogs battlefront 2 will still sell well, no doubt, but the previous one had more than 400K+ sales for its first week in the UK. i'd be surprised not to see a drop, though sony and EA will go hard on the marketing i'm sure. i bought the last one, but won't be buying this one, and i know quite a few in the same situation.
It is just before the big holidays thats why. And they release way to many games is small timeframe.
Gaming crash?
I just checked on the PCs latest metacrirics and there was literally 100 games released in the last few days.
Over saturation more like.
I think GT Sport will do better than GT6 - a lot of people gave that a miss due to the PS4 launch.
GT Sport will fare much, much better imo.
@RedMageLanakyn I think that is the problem there is a insane amount for sale i dont have time to finish them its insane.
@ShogunRok me kinda lol as stated in the review article, I don't think it's any good, nobody was asking for this sequel, Dishonored and Wolfenstein deserved sequels, for me this didn't.
Looks like Shadow of War and The Evil Within 2 will not sell like their predecessors, right? I wonder if the loot boxes for Shadow of War are the main reason for this.
These games will be 1/2 price when black Friday rolls around,not long now...
@Bad-MuthaAdebisi I wanted it! I want a third too! lol
My country never fails to disappoint when it comes to video game sales, it's ridiculous how FIFA of all games is best selling. Shame, because publishers will get the idea that no one wants survival horror games.
@3MonthBeef True, but any AAA horror selling poorly especially one like this, is always a step towards devs and publishers giving up on the genre.
Crash still in the top 10! Is it never going to stop? Incredible!
Quite a few things at play I imagine, small % digital for sure, saturation of big games recently must have an impact but for me I think it's been an incredible run of games released earlier this year on PS4 plus the Switch factor that has meant i'm still playing through/yet to play or yet to buy a whole heap of games that are now much cheaper that has pushed a lot of these full priced games right back on my games priority list.
Can not say I feel sad for Bethesda after the marketing bs they are pulling with Wolfenstein. Just like almost every game gamers know they will be half price within months. I enjoyed the first title one of the best horrors in years. I do feel sad though for the employees who put a lot of work into this game. Just because you make a good game does not mean it will sell.
I think the game was just launched at a bad time. It was dealing with other big title games and the original game though it was good I don't think too many people knew about it (or at the least wasn't considered "mainstream" in the gaming community).
Success is relative to cost and expectation. While many games now inflate production cost 2 or 3 times with marketing cost and so need much bigger returns in a shorter time scale Bethesda seems to have taken a different direction outside its core titles. TEWI was not overly costly to make with todays development tools and with a limited marketing spend if it continues to tick over sales through the next 12 or 24 months with little competition in the horror / survival genre it will turn a health profit with reduced risk. This seems to me to be a very sound long term strategy.
I personally think this game is amazing, if you like resident evil 5 or 6 but want a bit more exploration and a skill tree I recommend buying this game, its 100 times better than last of us and everyone hypes over that average game
@kyleforrester87 I second that! The Evil Within games are niche, but for me they fill a void that has been felt since Resident Evil 4. Sure, they absolutely aren't as groundbreaking as RE4, but I still think they're damned good!
I buy every PS4 game digitally, and while I know that there probably isn't a huge margin of people that do this, I would like to see my purchase represented in a sales chart. I'm only speaking for myself of course; not everyone cares.
crash incoming my god what waffle! heard this years ago from people was stupid then as it is now. one of the best ones was SONY will go under by 2012 still makes me chuckle.
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