UK Sales Charts: Saints Row Claims the Throne, Sells Best on PS5

Considering all the bad reviews for SR, ppl keep buying it. Either ppl want to believe in Volition or ppl want a goofy game where they can wreck some s***.

If that's the case Just Cause 4 is super cheap.

Go woke… go profitable?

Good I guess, but Saints Row never been my cup of tea.

But then again - only cared to play 3 games on that list (Forbidden West, GT7 and Lego SW)

Enjoying Soul Hackers 2.

I would love to crawl into the minds of those people that forked out full price for Saints Row just to see what goes on in there.

The many reviews I've watched paint it as a hollow, terribly written and buggy mess of a game.

I bought saints and it just seems to lack the personality the previous ones had. I dont mind them scaling back on the madness but the new characters suuuuuck and no its because of woke etc. They just feel bland. Didnt help the male voice selection sucks. Where's my british cockney voice? I wanted to make my Saints Statam again XD

That's disappointing. I don't care what Rob says, that game looks absolutely terrible in the most generic way possible.

@BRT15 Some people have a mind of their own.

@Danloaded
Scaling back was needed because 3, and especially 4, went off the damn rails to the point where by the end of 4 the series seemed almost unrecognizable. Unfortunately, like you mention, the characters suck and the overall 'charm' the first two had isn't there. Even 3 and 4, while they were bad SR games, had the cast of characters I could appreciate.

Ps5 horizon bundle in stock now for retail at Walmart if anyone wants one. https://www.walmart.com/ip/PS5-Console-Horizon-Forbidden-West-Bundle/884437848?irgwc=1&sourceid=imp_xPb3iK2HixyNUdcw3n0BVyJtUkDRW6WXIyxITM0&veh=aff&wmlspartner=imp_1442478&clickid=xPb3iK2HixyNUdcw3n0BVyJtUkDRW6WXIyxITM0&sharedid=&affiliates_ad_id=1167790&campaign_id=9383

@Smiffy01 exactly. That's what intrigues me. 🤪

Curious to know how many copies of Forbidden West have been sold thus far.

Sad to read this. I was hoping it fails so maybe we get the old crew back. Still, we need to see if it makes a big profit or not.

Unfortunately, The digital version of Soul Hackers 2 for the West was the only way to get some of the items and this is a physical chart…

The thing isn't making it to the number 1 spot, with the sheer amount of advertising they put out they better hope it does at least that well. What remains to be seen is how long it will stay there. For comparisons sake look how Horizon: FW continues to sell exceptionally well even long after it's original launch. Very impressive for a single player only game that hasn't had any substantial updates in a while.

Only thing that top 10 seems to show is that Nintendo are crushing it.

HFW is still artificially high as it's the only way to buy a PS5, should you be inclined. I suspect it would have dropped out of sight if the PS5 was available on its own.

Lukewarm? This game is all around mediocre.

@sanderson72 is it really the only way? Cuz it's been proven false over and over again the last couple of months.

Soul Hackers 2 will almost certainly be half-price or less by black friday. That's a pretty dire debut for a multiplatform title.

@sanderson72 It usually hovered around the bottom half of the top ten list before Sony decided to bundle it with new PS5s.

@sanderson72 with old games too. This means that people are still buying the Switch, especially with Mk8d selling the way it is. I would think that everyone who wants a copy would have one by now, unless they are new to the system….

@naruball maybe not the only way, but it sure seems like this is the path of least resistance

Is it any real surprise that Saints Row has sold well despite it being “woke”? Young gamers these days, especially those who play Fortnite, would resonate with the Saints characters. I’m actually focusing on the gameplay and enjoying the game so far I’m glad it’s selling well but saying that I’ve only rented it, I definitely wouldn’t pay full price but if it was in a sale for £25 then I would.

Its a very fun if very buggy game, hopefully they can sort out the bugs out as i feel it would have been received far better otherwise.

@BRT15 I like how you make a dig at those who bought the game but have only reviews to go on (fun fact this site gave it an 7/10) and no realyl actual opinion yourself on the game due to not playing it to form one.

I prefer playing some kids games on PS5 instead.

@Ralizah It it really that dire vs expectations though? I can't imagine a more niche game than Soul Hackers/Devil Summoner. Even LoH is more mainstream by comparison. Heck, even Disgaia is more mainstream these days.

FWIW, I'm playing it, still in the first hour because I'm XC3 binging and probably will be for quite some time, even approaching lvl 50 now, so most of what I've seen is cutscene and introduction, but so far, it's a LOT more "Soul Hackers" feeling than I imagined it would be from the promos. It's not quite 90's gritty with lots of leather, spikes, and goths like the first one, but the structure and feel, so far, is more Soul Hackers/Summoner than it looked despite the colorful palette, and cutrate Pyra/Mythra clones. Except the shopping areas that feel more TMSFE.

I haven't got to much battle other than the training dungeon, but the combat definitely has that kinetic progression of TMSFE, due to the "stacks" mechanic....pretty fun so far. IDK if my opinion will change of the dungeons, but, it's a dungeon crawler, I expect the dungeons to be dungeony, with repetitive "jobs boards" sidequests recycling dungeons. Because that's what crawlers do. But I have to say it's definitely grabbed me (in what I like in an SMT game) more than SMTV did. I know you love SMTV and I really don't....but we both liked 4 so there's something.
(Disclaimer, I've always preferred the Devil Summoner subseries to mainline, though.)

@nessisonett What's woke about it? First time I've heard it described that way 🤔

I'm contributing to the HFW sales this month 😬😁

It really was the only way to get another PS5 in the UK, but I also don't mind as I will play HFW.

Honestly though, the amount of times I added non bundles to my basket at stores to be then told unavailable was stupid. Considering half of the bundles they were selling were none official and were the base console with games slapped on to the order...at the same stores that said the base console was not available for purchase...

@NEStalgia At least aesthetic changes were made to appeal to the Persona crowd (including DLC, lol), and that series has massive visibility for a JRPG series not called "Pokemon" or "Final Fantasy."

I'd have at least expected it to debut in the top ten. Even SMT V did, and that never really enjoyed the 'Switch boost' a lot of other new titles on the system do.

It's possible digital sales are picking up the slack, but there just doesn't seem to be a lot of attention being paid to so far.

I mean, we'll know soon. Atlus is one of those companies that crows about sales milestones on Twitter as soon as they hit them.

Glad to hear you're enjoying it, though. I'm not excited by what I've heard about the battle system, but I'm open to enjoying it when I do get around to the game.

@nessisonett what about lightyear, ms marvel, batgirl, batwoman, supergirl, resident evil netflix series, etc released this year?
all woke, all broke/cancelled/flopped.
and I heard you can customize the characters of this game so...

@Sqush-Pare God knows. The comment sections on anything mentioning the game have been pretty mental though.

@Finozzi1696 I love how your definition of woke is just anything at all with women in them. Batgirl not releasing has nothing to do with it being woke, it’s to do with tax. Ms Marvel was relatively successful and she’s coming back in a movie. Batwoman got cancelled the same time as the CW was sold to another company and they axed 90% of all their shows. Supergirl wasn’t cancelled, it was renewed for a final season as shows aren’t made to run forever. It also finished last November. Lightyear was terrible and Disney’s attempts at representation are borderline insulting anyway. Resident Evil was also rubbish but it was still enjoyable. Netflix cancel most of their output after one season regardless of how woke it is. So your bizarre attempt at creating a narrative where the world is black and white and WOKE SHOWS get cancelled or do badly and idk Duck Dynasty or whatever people like you watch is what the public demand is just flawed. There are always lots and lots of factors that go into media and that nuance has been lost with the advent of increasingly larger numbers of people with cottage cheese between the ears.

Really enjoying Saints Row. I’d go as far as to say it’s the best Saints Row game (and I’ve played them all). Currently at 67% completion and I don’t want it to end.

I just wish woke would go back to its original meaning and not a random bucket.

Despite all the flack it’s getting it seems to be doing well from the sound of it. My best bet is to wait for a sale.

@Ralizah Releasing a SMT spinoff on everything but the Nintendo platform was very likely to end badly for Atlus.

There's plenty of positive reviews of saints row on YouTube, noones calling it a masterpiece or anything but they say it's a good time.

@Ralizah smtv released on switch during holiday season with Nintendo shining a big spotlight on it. And it was a sequel to a semi popular 3ds game and a recent remaster of nocturne. Sh2 released on everything but switch to almost no media fanfare no platform sponsored promotion, in the shadow of persona announcements, and as a sequel to a 90s Sega Saturn game that was never localized until 3ds.

It was NEVER going to be in the top ten.

@NEStalgia if they'd released a collectors edition in the uk it would've. People go crazy for atlus collectors editions.

@Balosi By "people" do you mean "scalpers"?

@Sqush-Pare it's "woke" because the entire cast isn't white men. There's a group of people who are very against everything besides that.

It's a great game. Doesn't deserve the hate.

@Milktastrophe 'woke' does seem to be becoming increasingly vague. Kind of a good thing for people who dislike the word's use, overuse is lowering whatever power it had.

Edit : kind of like how 'boomer' once targeted a specific group, but has now evolved/devolved to simply mean anyone over thirty.

@naruball Most online retailers, such as Shop To, Currys and Game Collection, have PS5s in stock but only if you want to pay the extra £50 (well, £80 now...) for HFW.

Only one I've seen without it is GAME who will sell you a stock PS5 if you buy a bundle with another controller and some other unnecessary merchandise.

GT7 is just amazing. It really deserves to be higher. Hopefully it will have long legs. I love it, from daily races, time trials (every two weeks) where getting gold nets you a lot of credits (and allows you to measure yourself against the best), to just being a great sandbox for mucking around with tuning, to of course the driving experience. This game in my 35 years of gaming is the one I played the most (already) at over 350hrs and I don’t see it drastically reducing any time soon.

One trash tops another lol I mean even I know as someone who is not a fan of horizon that it's better than saints row. But ffs being topped by that of all games, even if it's new is sad.

@sanderson72 the report that 40% of the sales are just the console clearly shows that almost half are without Horizon or any other game.

There’s just not really much out. I’m still playing the Hitman 3 maps and looking at buying Great Ace Attorney. I’m assuming every PS5 AAA pretty much will take the top spot upon release right now. Hasn’t been a really decent release for it since Elden Ring in.. February?

@ATaco Forbidden West didn’t sell all that well initially as it came out at a more competitive time. There was Elden Ring, that FF title, I’m sure some other stuff as well.

It always looked like a decent enough game that would be good to buy when the price dropped a bit. Some stores have reduced it already, and it’s benefitting from being part of PS5 bundles and not a lot of quality new games coming out.

It’s not been the hit they had hoped but it’s one of those games they’ll will keep selling along with consoles I think.

@Milktastrophe I don’t think that’s it. Woke refers more to a political agenda.

The original saints row had a more diverse cast than this one does - plenty of female characters and Asian and Hispanic and black characters. And that didn’t get criticised, it was praised. But they didn’t make it a selling point of the game in the way they did this time around.

A lot of people want them to focus primarily on them being good characters rather than being (tick box here) which we are seeing more of. Although I do get there’s a lot of racism and things in with the criticism.

@Justin113 woke has nothing to do with politics (ok, disregarding that a many politics and laws are discriminatory, as it would be used with a video game isn't political). It means awareness of discrimination, especially with regards to race. If you're woke then you're against discrimination. There's nothing political about being a decent human being.

The people that use woke derogatorily use it to simply mean diversity, as if that was a bad thing. The existence of non-white people is not a political agenda, it's simply a fact of life.

@Milktastrophe that might be the official meaning but in the case of things like this it’s the politics and agenda that is the main issue for people rather than the racism you seem desperate to label them with.

As I said among many other examples the original saints row had a major Hispanic, black, Jewish and Asian female character and they were really well liked. Julius, a black man, is the most popular character in the series. This is diversity. People did not rebel against these characters because they were good characters regardless of their background.

In 2022 the directors have gone on record at several points to stress how important it is to be diverse and show diversity in the game, call those who didn’t like the art ‘haters’, while creating a ‘street gang’ made up of the geekiest looking diversity crew they possibly could which in itself damages the credibility of the game as a serious Saints Row reboot from the outset.

The characters themselves stress how important their cultures and diversity are and this is seemingly at the expense of them having any real personality beyond their minority status.

This is done for a purpose, not to show the ‘existence’ of non white people, because the first saints row did that. They force it as part of a political agenda spreading across all media. For what purpose I don’t know, but it’s not to make us aware non white people exist as we’ve known this since 1970.

The initial saints row was a far better example of actual diversity, showing rounded fleshed out minority characters that were more than a box ticking exercise, while also showing that the majority of Americans are white people which like it or not is simply a fact of life.

@Danloaded that’s kinda the thing, it is because of woke. I get that you don’t dislike them because they’re a geeky anti capitalist liberal black guy with a bow tie. You dislike them because they’re bland and no effort went into making them likeable.

But they’re bland because the developers cared more about having a geeky anti capitalist liberal black guy with a bow tie than they did a well written well developed likeable character that fit the story.

@nessisonett how much more would it have sold without all the negative publicity?

But beyond that we generally know that bait and switches work the first time. Get broke go woke tends to refer to the death of the franchise. After the bait and switch buys/ratings seemingly always go down for all subsequent entries/seasons. Fans buy it/watch it/play it, are disappointed and don’t buy the next one.

I don’t get why people celebrate woke either way. You want to tell me what was not diverse about the original saints row games which starred about 50 percent minority characters by my take?

It’s not the minorities that make woke content terrible, it’s the forced nature of having to remind us every 5 minutes that they’re a black person/woman rather than just being a badass character like women and black people always were in video games and comics before communists got their hands on them. If you really value terribly written shoehorned characters and trashy writing over a great game/film with a good plot, I just don’t understand it or know what to tell you. There’s a place for radical socialism but I wouldn’t say media was it.

Woke, not woke, in a coma, whatever, I just don't think I will ever take a liking to those four gangsta geeks/Malibu's most wanted characters.. Maybe it's my age, 25+, and maybe playing the game will change my mind.

I streamed SR2 for a few hours yesterday. Still lots of fun 14 years later from my first play.

I really like the game some of the reviews are just harsh and overly trash the game im not saying its special but theres fun to be had. That said id like to see some small changes like being able to choose what car I have delivered and I would also like to choose my weapon loadout instead of having to choose between my sniper rifle and thrust busters which are awesome.

@ATaco I'm not so sure on Horizon Forbidden West sales.
Sony have been radio silent on revealing any sale figures for over 6 months now.

It only took them 2 weeks after the release of Horizon Zero Dawn back in 2017 for Sony to proudly announce the game had sold 2.6 million copies.

Last year, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart did 1.1 million copies within 2 weeks and again ....Sony were quick to announce those figures.

Being completely quiet on Horizon Forbidden West sales 6 months after release ...raises a few questions in regards to if Sony are actually happy with it's performance. It's a big IP ....released on PS4 which has sold 117 million units and PS5 that's currently around 23 million units sold.
What were Sony's sale expectations for the game? And were they met?

Another thing that falls to question is ....how important are UK boxed sales? How much do they really contribute to the overall global sales (boxed and digital) of a game?

GamesIndustryBiz also reports on Saints Row's UKs number 1 debut entry (boxed sales), and claims the game sold 5x the amount of 2017s Agents of Mayhem's UK boxed sales.

Agents of Mayhem was a HUGE flop. Selling 300,000 copies (boxed and digital) in GLOBAL sales....6 MONTHS after it's release!!!!! So how many copies AoM sold in just UK boxed sales 1 week after launch is unknown. But I can't imagine the figure would be much to write home about.
Come to think of it, why are they comparing it to AoM and not another actual mainline Saints Row game?

As of now, Deep Silver have not given sales figures for the new Saints Row game. It took them 8 days after the release of Saints Row IV back in 2013 to officially state SR4 had done 1 million in sales.

@CieloAzure I can't figured people out these days. They love the crap out of some over priced crap or hype it up so much it sells well and gets crappy sequels. Or over priced remakes you get nothing new with. And then give great games an it was alright review. Maybe they are trying to hide them in the middle ratings so everyone wont play it right away and then their retro copy will be worth thousands one day.

@Justin113 All media, entertainment, art and politics is filling up with these people. Its easy degrees or knowing someone to get the job, not much work, high pay, and you get to sling your vision for the world on the masses. Mainly aiming for children to make more like them so the can infiltrate the whole of society. Wells wrote a book about it before he died and pretty much hit the nail dead on when addressing liberals and democratic views being pushed on us all by a few at the time would be a sickness on the US in a hundred years and the start of civil war.