UK Games Charts Analysis: July 9th-15th

Published July 16, 2012 | By Tom Buxton

A new weekly feature examining just what the British gaming demographic are buying and why…

Well, in the three weeks I’ve been covering the UK charts here at NSA so far, one single factor has remained constant - LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes is dominating this quiet period of video gaming. For an entire month now, the brilliant family-orientated superhero title has remained in first place, unbeaten by new competitors or sports games riding on recent and upcoming competitions. So, has anything changed at all this week, or is there nothing interesting to report?

First of all, as always, before we go into the analysis, let’s look at the Top Ten best-selling video games for the last seven days:

1. LEGO BATMAN 2: DC SUPERHEROES (1)
2. LONDON 2012: THE GAME (2)
3. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (3)
4. DEAD ISLAND: GAME OF THE YEAR EDITION (5)
5. TOM CLANCY’S GHOST RECON: FUTURE SOLDIER (9)
6. CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 3 (8)
7. THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM (6)
8. FIFA 12 (7)
9. SPEC OPS: THE LINE (4)
10. MARIO & SONIC AT THE LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES

Clearly Batman, London 2012 and Spider-Man are all still staying fairly constant in their positions given that each of them is inspired by either a recent or impending ‘release’. Deep Silver will no doubt be happy too to see Dead Island‘s new edition rising further up the charts too, likely due to some retailers selling it for as cheap a price as £15. Ghost Recon had been steadily decreasing down the ranks recently, so its resurgence comes as something of a surprise, although with Call Of Duty returning to the Top Ten this week it seems some novelty shooters are going through a strong selling period.

I wouldn’t like to class Spec Ops: The Line as a ‘novelty shooter’ though – I really enjoyed playing through it a couple of weeks back, and gave it a strong 4/5 in my review. It’s a shame that 2K’s sublime franchise reboot isn’t getting as much attention as it deserves, but we can at least hope that worldwide sales have proved healthy enough to warrant a fully-fledged sequel in the near future.

Rounding off the charts are a fairly regular bunch of attendees, Skyrim, FIFA and Mario & Sonic. It never ceases to amaze me that people still find enough reason to buy the FIFA games year in year out when they’re so unmistakably identikit, but obviously the market is still there, and EA will doubtless be ready to provide countless similar sequels after FIFA 13 arrives later this year.

Some of you may be wondering where newcomer sci-fi shooter Inversion has landed itself, and the answer is…well, it hasn’t. Unless they count coming fiftieth in what was already a slow week for sales as placing in the charts, then Namco Bandai will probably be disappointed with their UK launch of the game, especially considering all of the delays it has had in the past. A shame, really!

It seems unlikely that LEGO Batman 2 will shift next week given that The Dark Knight Rises is just around the corner. If and when things do change in terms of the UK charts, you’ll be the first to know right here, but for now Sleeping Dogs doesn’t half feel a long way off.