November 13th weekly European sales charts

A retrospective look at last weeks sales figures.

Hardware

Console	Weekly Total (change)
PS3	230,284(+27%)
X360	226,598(+78%)
DS	222,163(+13%)
Wii	207,147(+9%)
PSP	83,997(+17%)
PS2	53,655(+11%)

A pretty balanced uptake this week with all key consoles other than the PSP braking the 200k mark and a steady sales increase all across the board in part thanks to Call of Duty: Black Ops. The Xbox 360 in particular saw a massive sales boost of nearly 80%, bringing them back from the brink after last weeks underwhelming figures. The boost is no doubt attributed to the Kinect a-mania sweeping the globe but still fell short of toppling the PS3 from the European top spot. Sony better not get too proud about the whole thing though, as even with a 17% increase the PSP still seems to be struggling to contend with its rivals and rather embarrassingly is barely outselling the ancient PS2. As usual Nintendo are the real winners here, managing to uphold strong sales of both their platforms without a single new game of any real significance in over a month.

Top 20 Software

Pos	Game	Weeks in chart	Weekly Total	Total
1	Call of Duty: Black Ops (PS3) Activision	1	1,799,707	1,799,707
2	Call of Duty: Black Ops (X360) Activision	1	1,731,478	1,731,478
3	Kinect Adventures! (X360) Microsoft	1	327,526	327,526
4	Wii Sports (Wii) Nintendo	206	182,782	27,605,720
5	Call of Duty: Black Ops (PC) Activision	1	131,143	131,143
6	New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) Nintendo	52	119,446	4,666,345
7	Kinect Sports (X360) Microsoft	1	107,380	107,380
8	Wii Party (Wii) Nintendo	6	100,545	567,301
9	Just Dance 2 (Wii) Ubisoft	5	90,847	481,256
10	Wii Sports Resort (Wii) Nintendo	69	88,815	8,974,527
11	Professor Layton and the Lost Future (DS) Nintendo	4	71,864	454,031
12	Wii Fit Plus (Wii)Nintendo	55	66,140	5,841,658
13	FIFA 11 (PS3) EA Sports	7	59,555	2,236,138
14	New Super Mario Bros. (DS) Nintendo	229	48,285	8,117,836
15	Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 (PS3) Konami	7	44,255	976,973
16	Fable III (X360) Microsoft	3	43,617	484,191
17	FIFA 11 (X360) EA Sports	7	43,170	1,442,011
18	Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii) Nintendo	23	37,744	1,463,600
19	GoldenEye 007 (Wii) Activision	2	36,751	84,707
20	Dance Central (X360) MTV Games	1	34,957	34,957

To the surprise of absolutely no one with even half a brain cell, Call Of Duty: Black Ops totally dominated software sales last week with over 3 million units sold across both the primary platforms, smashing previous sales records to smithereens. And with both the PS3 and 360 versions selling near identical amounts It seems that the one thing a lot of console fanboys can mostly agree on is their love of COD.

Despite sharing a release date with such a monster, 3 Kinect launch titles managed to work their way into the Top 20 but aren’t exactly setting the charts on fire like they are in the US. Dance Central seems to have failed to even brake into the top 10, making it very unlikely to even hit the 50k sales milestone before fading into obscurity. Evidently Europeans are more interested in trying to assassinate Fidel Castro than dancing around while barking commands at their 360s.

Speaking of under-performers I’m sure Activsion is more than a little upset that GoldenEye 007 is perilously close to falling off the charts after only 2 weeks and less than 100k units sold. Nintendo probably isn’t too pleased either, they were hoping to use GoldenEye to quell the supposed “myth” that only first party games can succeed on the Wii. A pretty hard position to argue when all but one of the other Wii games in the charts are produced by Nintendo themselves, most of which have spent consecutive weeks in those positions and some of which have spent consecutive YEARS.

Fable 3 seems to be holding on for dear life, refusing to fall into the abyss of the second hand market that lurks beyond, but it’s unlikely to hold out too much longer. Although near 500k units sold isn’t anything to sniff at, it’s a shame to see it outdone by the soon to be de-charted yearly sports games, at least they can brake Fables fall as it crashes down into the preowned pile at GAME.

Notable no shows this week:

Fallout: New Vegas
Even with relatively healthy sales it only spent 3 weeks in the top 20, but I’m sure Bethesda are patting them selves on the back for getting this bad boy out the door before it would have had to compete with Black Ops or Kinect.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2
On launch this high profile game failed to even brake into the top 10, perhaps in part to it’s ice cold reception from critics that earned it a metascore of 62/100, that’s 11 points LOWER than the original. Of course don’t think for a moment that this will stop Lucas Arts continuing to milk the IP for as long as humanly possible, at the very least were likely to see a few DLC packs thrown in at some point.

Sales figures courtesy of www.vgchartz.com