UK charts: Ace Combat 7 is series’ biggest take off

The new entry in the beloved Ace Combat franchise debuted to strong sales given the time of the year, becoming the biggest launch in the series. Entering the weekly charts directly at No.2, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown sold 80.4 per cent more copies on its launch week than the previous main entry in the franchise, Ace Combat 6, did 12 years ago. However, Ace Combat 6 was an Xbox 360 exclusive, while this time around Ace Combat 7 released on both PS4 and Xbox One, which partly explains the increase in sales.

Ace Combat 7 sold primarily on PS4, with Sony’s console getting 76 per cent of all physical copies sold on Week One, against 24 per cent on Xbox One.

Despite this good performance, it wasn’t enough to move New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe from its top spot, despite the Switch title seeing its sales decrease 43 per cent week-on-week.

There’s not a lot to say about the rest of the charts, as Ace Combat 7 was the only new entry in this week’s Top 40.

The Top Ten remained largely unchanged. FIFA 19 dropped three places to No.5 with a 33 per cent decrease in sales, while the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy re-entered at No.9. Battlefield V, which was No.7 last week, fell to No.18 with a 56 per cent drop in sales, while Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition, which previously debuted at No.9, fell to No.32 as its sales decreased 71 per cent week-on-week.

Unsurprisingly, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard re-entered the charts at No.28 with a 68 per cent rise in sales as players get ready for the launch of Resident Evil 2 this week.

Here’s the Top Ten for the week ending on January 19th (data courtesy of GfK/Ukie):

To keep an eye on what’s releasing when, don’t forget to take a look at our release schedule, updated weekly.