Last Fantasy 16 is the 5th most significant UK boxed launch of 2023 (up until now)|UK Boxed Charts

The UK boxed charts were dominated by Last Fantasy 16, which debuted at No. 1.

With sales 74% lower than the 2016 boxed release of Final Fantasy 15, it is hardly a major debut for the famed franchise. Final Fantasy 16 is, of course, PS5-exclusive, although its prequel was available on both PS4 and Xbox One. There was a period when PS4 had a larger installed base than PS5 does now, and that’s when the prior game was released.

Since 2016, the speed of digitization has been the most important element in the decline. When the digital data comes in, the decline from age 15 will be far less severe.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Hogwarts Legacy, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and the Resident Evil 4 remake all outsold Last Fantasy 16 in the first few weeks of their respective releases.

Zelda’s sales have dropped 35% from the previous week due to the release of the new Square Enix game, sending it back to number two.

There are further recent releases among the top video games. New at #3 is Sonic Origins Plus. Boxed copies of the Sega video game sold the best on the Switch (52 percent), followed by the PS5 (29) and the Xbox One (11 percent). It’s not surprising that physical sales outperform digital sales for Switch, as has been the case historically, and that Xbox’s digital sales share typically exceeds that of both PlayStation and Switch.

Focus Home Interactive’s Aliens: Dark Descent debuts at No. 11, and Crash Team Rumble scores at No. 15.

For more recent games, we see a 51% decline in sales for F1 2023, which drops to No. 5, a 36% drop in sales for Street Fighter 6, which drops out of the Top Ten and into No. 21, and a 37% drop in sales for Diablo 4, which drops from No. 2 to No. 8.

The other PS5 exclusive from Square Enix released this year, Forspoken, has seen a 46% spike in sales week over week, propelling it to position No. 12. The video game has seen increased sales for the third week in a row.

Here is the GfK UK Boxed Top Ten for the week ending June 24, 2023: