We had previously reported that God of War Ragnarok was highly successful in smashing UK sales records. Now we have a better idea of just how successful the game was in this period.
Again, using data shared by GI.Biz, God of War Ragnarok outsold Elden Ring, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and Pokemon Legends Arceus, in the same sales period. Interestingly, FIFA 23 did outsell God of War Ragnarok, but that’s not necessarily a negative for the franchise. FIFA is of course a cornerstone in European gaming, and FIFA 23 is particularly highly anticipated for being the last FIFA game from EA’s signature football game franchise.
To further clarify, GI.Biz mainly tracked physical sales. If digital sales were taken into account for any of these franchises, it is possible that many or all of these games did also outsell God of War Ragnarok. In particular, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is highly likely to have outperformed it, as a considerably older and bigger franchise, which is also multiplatform.
Focusing on God of War Ragnarok itself, only 18 % of total game sales were made on PlayStation 4, and a clear majority of 82 % were sold on PlayStation 5. With regards to the PlayStation 5, 12 % of the game’s boxed sales for the period were thanks to the special God of War Ragnarok PlayStation 5 bundle. The same bundle made up 60 % of all PlayStation 5 consoles sold within the week. This is the largest week for UK PlayStation 5sales for the year.
We actually covered the story that multiple video game developers were anticipating the potential breakthrough success of God of War Ragnarok, and generally, how it would eat up the game sales charts on its release. It was such a big deal that some of these developers decided to delay their own game releases to avoid having to compete with the game.
While there’s still a lot of anticipation going around if God of War Ragnarok is going to have a PC port, we cannot disregard that it is already clearly a huge sales success. Rather than discourage them, this may embolden Sony to bring the game over to PC even more, as it may reflect potential for the game to also perform very well on PC. Jim Ryan has turned out to be surprisingly prescient, when he recognized that PC sales of PlayStation games would not cannibalize those same games being sold on their own PlayStation consoles.
Here and now, Jim and the rest of PlayStation can bask in the success of one of their signature franchises.
Source: Video Games Chronicle
