(UK) Anthem's physical sales half Mass Effect Andromeda's

bombshell · Feb 25, 2019

Anthem topped the UK boxed game sales chart during its first week of release, but with half the physical sales of BioWare's previous game Mass Effect Andromeda.

Without digital sales through EA's Origin service on PC, or download sales on PlayStation or Xbox, it's difficult to draw exact comparisons. But from the comparisons we can make, Anthem's sales do not paint a hugely positive picture.

Anthem only managing half the launch week sales of Andromeda is disappointing, as Andromeda only managed half the launch week sales of Mass Effect 3.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-02-25-anthem-physical-sales-half-mass-effect-andromeda

The EA game performed best on PS4, accounting for 54 per cent of sales. 40 per cent came on Xbox One, with the remainder on PC.

The game sold comfortably more than last week's big new games, including Far Cry: New Dawn and Metro Exodus. But it isn't the fastest-selling game of the year, that is a position currently held by Resident Evil 2 and then Kingdom Hearts III.

Of course, as an online-focused game, it's likely Anthem performed well as a download release. The charts data does not currently factor in digital sales, making any meaningful analysis impossible.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-02-25-anthem-tops-uk-boxed-charts

More details about this week's UK physical sales data in the respective links.

Top 10 week ending Feb 23:

Anthem (~42k)
Far Cry: New Dawn
FIFA 19
Red Dead Redemption 2
Metro: Exodus
Forza Horizon 4
New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Call of Duty Black Ops 4
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Deleted member 2254 · Feb 25, 2019

UK is never representative of the big picture, much less physical only, as I'd expect a game like Anthem mainly sell digitally. Still, that sounds pretty bad, considering how enormous the hype around Anthem was compared to Andromeda. We'll see the bigger numbers soon enough, anyhow.

ket · Feb 25, 2019

"Of course, as an online-focused game, it's likely Anthem performed well as a download release. The charts data does not currently factor in digital sales, making any meaningful analysis impossible."

ok

Acquiescence · Feb 25, 2019

Anthem isn't much to sing about it turns out.

Jonnykong · Feb 25, 2019

Those legs on Mario Bros Deluxe.

Astandahl · Feb 25, 2019

El-Suave · Feb 25, 2019

Not painting this as good news but Anthem is one of those typical games you'll want to get digitally if you remotely plan to stick with it.

Knight in Shining Armani · Feb 25, 2019

FairyEmpire said:
UK is never representative of the big picture, much less physical only, as I'd expect a game like Anthem mainly sell digitally. Still, that sounds pretty bad, considering how enormous the hype around Anthem was compared to Andromeda. We'll see the bigger numbers soon enough, anyhow.

We've had some enormous hype for games here. Anthem was not one of them, at least not close to launch. After the reveal, maybe.

Vault · Feb 25, 2019

unless it has a 90% digital rate that is massive flop

pswii60 · Feb 25, 2019

I thought the split would be higher towards PS4 as I expect many XBO owners will have gone down the EA Access route (10 hour trial + digital discounts).

Also surprised 6% of sales are PC physical. I didn't realise they still even did physical PC games.

Dojima · Feb 25, 2019

The game is so much fun and this is bad. I hope digitally it's doing well

WillySJ3 · Feb 25, 2019

We need to know digital sales, i thought 2019 would be different.

bombshell · Feb 25, 2019

pswii60 said:
I thought the split would be higher towards PS4 as I expect many XBO owners will have gone down the EA Access route (10 hour trial + digital discounts).

Also surprised 6% of sales are PC physical. I didn't realise they still even did physical PC games.

I'd guess it's just a code in a box, but someone with actual knowledge about the PC physical release can correct if I'm wrong.

pswii60 · Feb 25, 2019

ket said:
"Of course, as an online-focused game, it's likely Anthem performed well as a download release. The charts data does not currently factor in digital sales, making any meaningful analysis impossible."

ok

Yes we do need to factor this in to the UK charts each week. Digital is such a huge chunk these days. But we've been promised digital sales would be included in the UK charts for the beginning of 2019... and we're still waiting!

Kaswa101 · Feb 25, 2019

Acquiescence said:
Anthem isn't much to sing about it turns out.

Booooo

OléGunner · Feb 25, 2019

Even at 50% digital this is pretty much nuke bomba territory for AAA shlooter GAAS game.
(Shlooter is a thing now right?)

Good4Squat · Feb 25, 2019

I ended up buying a month of EA access premier so that I could try the full game for myself. So I guess they are at least getting some money that way from people like me who aren't completely sold on the game.

Will be interesting to see what the future holds for this game and Bioware in general.

bane833 · Feb 25, 2019

El-Suave said:
Not painting this as good news but Anthem is one of those typical games you'll want to get digitally if you remotely plan to stick with it.

Let´s be generous here and say it´s 50% digital. The overall sales would still be garbage.

Deleted member 4976 · Feb 25, 2019

Resident Evil 2 is the fastest selling game of the year? Very nice.

funky · Feb 25, 2019

After that horrendous demo / beta / whatever you want to call it, I ain't suprosed.

Patitoloco · Feb 25, 2019

OléGunner said:
Even at 50% digital this is pretty much nuke bomba territory for AAA shlooter GAAS game.
(Shlooter is a thing now right?)

I hope not.

theaface · Feb 25, 2019

The charts data does not currently factor in digital sales, making any meaningful analysis impossible.

Irrespective of Anthem, this is broader issue with sales data. Whilst I appreciate that the platform holders may not be sharing data, it just seems crazy in this day and age that digital sales aren't counted.

Noppie · Feb 25, 2019

OléGunner said:
Even at 50% digital this is pretty much nuke bomba territory for AAA shlooter GAAS game.
(Shlooter is a thing now right?)

Definitely not.

Knight in Shining Armani · Feb 25, 2019

OléGunner said:
Even at 50% digital this is pretty much nuke bomba territory for AAA shlooter GAAS game.
(Shlooter is a thing now right?)

Yes. Please keep spreading the good word of the shlooter church.

Deleted member 2254 · Feb 25, 2019

Knight in Shining Armani said:
We've had some enormous hype for games here. Anthem was not one of them.

Era is not the world. Anthem is easily one of the most awaited games of this generation. The reveal blew people's minds. They advertised the game to hell and back. They had Neill Blomkamp make a short movie of the game. It's like the biggest new IP from EA in I don't know how many years, from Bioware nonetheless. EA expects to sell A LOT, and this was their big shot at the Destiny/Division-esque GAAS loot shooter with years of support for tens, hundreds of thousands of active players. Anthem, by all means, was supposed to be huge. Games like this aren't particularly big (comparatively) on Era, but the amount of posts in the OT shows that a lot of people are playing it even here. Anthem had everything to be huge, and EA spent a huge amount of resources on it, both development and advertisements. For weeks I could barely open a YouTube video without an Anthem trailer. Anthem literally sponsored The Walking Dead on TV here in Italy. By all means, it's supposed to be huge.

Kemono · Feb 25, 2019

That's sad for the team but i'm somewhat glad that such a behaviour from a big publisher isn't accepted.

Showing it by not buying the game is the only real way to make ea understand.

Servbot24 · Feb 25, 2019

El-Suave said:
Not painting this as good news but Anthem is one of those typical games you'll want to get digitally if you remotely plan to stick with it.

Agreed, but in this case it's also a game you want to wait to get digitally at $20.

Xevross · Feb 25, 2019

UK looter shooter physical debuts:

Borderlands 2 ~190k
Destiny 417k
The Division 277k
Destiny 2 175k
Anthem ~42k

Anthem would need a monster digital share to even be an okay launch. Kingdom Hearts 3's physical launch was 59% bigger than this, KH3!

fleante · Feb 25, 2019

Strong and stable

Linus815 · Feb 25, 2019

FairyEmpire said:
Era is not the world. Anthem is easily one of the most awaited games of this generation. The reveal blew people's minds. .

Nah. Anthem has barely any numbers on twitch, its only high voted content on reddit outside its own subreddit is people shitting on the game. Same for the youtube stuff.,

Bruno MB · Feb 25, 2019

Destiny 2 had a 35% digital ratio, it makes sense that a year and a half later the ratio has been increased to around or close to 50%. Even so, this would mean less than 100,000 units sold first week for a title which best market in Europe is UK because Bioware titles don't perform excessively well in the rest of biggest European regions perhaps with the exception of Germany. Unless it has an stellar performance in the US there is no way it is reaching the forecasted 5 - 6 million target.

bombshell · Feb 25, 2019

Xevross said:
UK looter shooter physical debuts:

Borderlands 2 ~190k
Destiny 417k
The Division 277k
Destiny 2 175k
Anthem ~42k

Anthem would need a monster digital share to even be an okay launch. Kingdom Hearts 3's physical launch was 59% bigger than this, KH3!

Ouch, thanks for the details. Maybe 100k at best with digital? That's still bad.

Trickster · Feb 25, 2019

This combined with Benji's tweet makes me pretty confident that the 6 million sales that EA were expecting for this quarter is completely out of reach now

Knight in Shining Armani · Feb 25, 2019

FairyEmpire said:
Era is not the world. Anthem is easily one of the most awaited games of this generation. The reveal blew people's minds. They advertised the game to hell and back. They had Neill Blomkamp make a short movie of the game. It's like the biggest new IP from EA in I don't know how many years, from Bioware nonetheless. EA expects to sell A LOT, and this was their big shot at the Destiny/Division-esque GAAS loot shooter with years of support for tens, hundreds of thousands of active players. Anthem, by all means, was supposed to be huge. Games like this aren't particularly big (comparatively) on Era, but the amount of posts in the OT shows that a lot of people are playing it even here. Anthem had everything to be huge, and EA spent a huge amount of resources on it, both development and advertisements. For weeks I could barely open a YouTube video without an Anthem trailer. Anthem literally sponsored The Walking Dead on TV here in Italy. By all means, it's supposed to be huge.

Now we're talking about "meant to be huge" and "lots of advertising". Those do not mean that there's hype. They might create hype, but clearly this didn't and the sales show.

ThroughtheVoid · Feb 25, 2019

Those are terribly bad numbers. I did not expect this.

Brinbe · Feb 25, 2019

No sugarcoating those numbers. BOMBA

WOM/bad first impressions is a strong thing in the digital age.

Not too different from Fallout 76. The audience for these games know better. If it's shite, they'll stay away.

If the Division 2 proves to be good, Ubi has a goldmine on their hands.

Dphex · Feb 25, 2019

Xevross said:
UK looter shooter physical debuts:

Borderlands 2 ~190k
Destiny 417k
The Division 277k
Destiny 2 175k
Anthem ~42k

Anthem would need a monster digital share to even be an okay launch. Kingdom Hearts 3's physical launch was 59% bigger than this, KH3!

in comparison like that it is really low for Anthem

Fatmanp · Feb 25, 2019

Wtf. Destiny had over 400k?

Tygre · Feb 25, 2019

Xevross said:
UK looter shooter physical debuts:

Borderlands 2 ~190k
Destiny 417k
The Division 277k
Destiny 2 175k
Anthem ~42k

Anthem would need a monster digital share to even be an okay launch. Kingdom Hearts 3's physical launch was 59% bigger than this, KH3!

Yikes.

Even assuming a significant jump in Digital sales compared to Destiny 2 or The Division (which I don't think is something we can necessarily assume, both of those games were also online only titles and the digital / physical landscape hasn't shifted that far in the intervening time)... Yikes.

Azusa · Feb 25, 2019

Not bad. I thought everyone will buy it digital or get it with origin subscription instead.

Nightwing123 · Feb 25, 2019

They better hope the game does way better in the rest of the world.

Tygre · Feb 25, 2019

Oh fuck.

Fallout 76 did 85k

Anthem did 50% of FO 76's numbers. Jesus.

Hanbei · Feb 25, 2019

Trickster said:
This combined with Benji's tweet makes me pretty confident that the 6 million sales that EA were expecting for this quarter is completely out of reach now

It was out of reach the moment they announced they expected the game to sell that much in such a short period of time. I'm not even sure it will sell that much in the next couple of years.

Tangyn · Feb 25, 2019

Ah man that's a shame.

As a brit who signed up for Origin Prem to play it I am not surprised though! Really happy with my £15 buy in cost to play it. I also get to play Titanfall 2 campaign now (hit 30 and probably won't play anymore) as I never played it before.

KORNdog · Feb 25, 2019

The issues the game has are so far reaching that I'm not surprised. It's one thing for a game to receive a few negative reviews that are ultimately ignored by mainstream gamers. But the problems anthem is having are being well documented across YouTube and almost all media outlets. That's going to affect sales in a much more impactful way. I'm sure sales numbers will continue to grow as the game gets updated to an acceptable level of quality, but I imagine most will buy at reduced sale prices.

ckareset · Feb 25, 2019

Iron Man Bioware game. It's time

Xevross · Feb 25, 2019

Tygre said:
Yikes.

Even assuming a significant jump in Digital sales compared to Destiny 2 or The Division (which I don't think is something we can necessarily assume, both of those games were also online only titles and the digital / physical landscape hasn't shifted that far in the intervening time)... Yikes.

Well thanks to Bruno we know Destiny 2 had a 35% digital ratio, if it was that first week then it sold about 270k. Even if Anthem had a huge jump to 55% digital, that's a debut of 1/3 of Destiny 2, and less than 1/3 of The Division without any digital accounted for. Yikes indeed...

bombshell · Feb 25, 2019

Tygre said:
Oh fuck.

Fallout 76 did 85k

Anthem did 50% of FO 76's numbers. Jesus.

This tiered bullshit release schedule is really not working out well for EA. When your game has shit word of mouth, giving a week head start to your most loyal customers just means that the rest of us won't show up a week later when we've had a whole week to be told to stay away from the train wreck.

Yaqza · Feb 25, 2019

Tygre said:
Oh fuck.

Fallout 76 did 85k

Anthem did 50% of FO 76's numbers. Jesus.

FO76 being twice much fun confirmed!

matrix-cat · Feb 25, 2019

Xevross said:
UK looter shooter physical debuts:

Borderlands 2 ~190k
Destiny 417k
The Division 277k
Destiny 2 175k
Anthem ~42k

Anthem would need a monster digital share to even be an okay launch. Kingdom Hearts 3's physical launch was 59% bigger than this, KH3!

Tygre said:
Oh fuck.

Fallout 76 did 85k

Anthem did 50% of FO 76's numbers. Jesus.

Goodness gracious.

I wonder how much damage the early access period did for day one sales. Same as what happened with ME Andromeda, letting everyone out there with a streaming connection broadcast hours of unpatched, unfinished game footage for the whole week leading up to release just seems like a baffling decision.

(UK) Anthem's physical sales half Mass Effect Andromeda's

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