Microsoft’s Gears of War: Judgment debuted in the top spot on UKIE GfK’s all formats top 40 chart for the week ending March 23rd, knocking Tomb Raider (which dropped 44 percent in week-over-week sales) down into second place, after the reboot scored two straight weeks as the best-selling game in the UK.
Despite the number one debut, Gears of War: Judgment did stumble a bit out of the starting block. The game sold only one fourth the number of copies in the UK that Gears of War 3 sold during its first week — although some of that can be explained away by Judgment having three less days during its launch week. Still, the failure to at least match the sales of the previous title is a disturbing trend that has hit many sequels over the past year.
Proving once again that having a popular license can more often than not fool unsuspecting consumers into buying an extremely sub-par product, Activision and Terminal Reality’s The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct debuted in an undeserved third place on the UK all formats chart.
On a happier note, Capcom’s Monster Hunter 3: Ultimate released in seventh on the all formats chart, giving Nintendo’s Wii U a desperately needed top 10 release. The 3DS accounted for the bulk (55 percent) of Monster Hunter 3: Ultimate sales, landing in tenth on the individual format chart. The Wii U version debuted further down in twelfth place, and pulled in almost 50% of the total revenue for all Wii U software sold during the week.
Further down the chart, Electronic Arts’ always-connected (never officially offline) SimCity continued its slow decent down the software chart falling from fifth place in the prior week to eight.
UKIE GfK Chart-Track All Formats Top 10 for the week ending March 23, 2013 reads as follows:
- Gears of War: Judgment
- Tomb Raider
- The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct
- FIFA 13
- Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2
- God of War: Ascension
- Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate
- SimCity
- Far Cry 3
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 2