Soulcalibur 6 sales down more than 55 per cent

Shame, tis a good accessible game. By comparison Tekken 7 rocketed in sales.

Soulcalibur 6 latest to see physical sales plummet compared to predecessor

But the soul still burns.

UK physical launch sales of Soulcalibur 6 are down drastically compared to Soulcalibur 5 - just the latest of many 2018 games where this has occurred.

Earlier this month, UK physical sales of the excellent Assassin's Creed Odyssey were 25 per cent down compared to last year's Origins - although worldwide, combined digital and physical sales were upoverall. And then last week, Black Ops 4's UK physical launch sales were the lowest seen in a decade.

Soulcalibur 6 this week has, arguably, a tougher comparison than both. Its UK physical launch sales were down more than 55 per cent compared to Soulcalibur 5 - although this launched all the way back in 2012, when digital sales were far from the norm.

The rise of digital sales will make up a lot of the difference, then - which is more positive for game publishers, but still bad news for game retailers.

Ubisoft's new toys-to-life franchise Starlink: Battle for Atlas, a game where you need to go into a shop to buy the physical bits and bobs, arrived in 14th place in the chart. Notably, more than 80 per cent of sales were of the Switch version, where Nintendo's own Star Fox is an exclusive character.

The full top 10 lies below:

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
2. FIFA 19
3. Assassin's Creed Orangey
4. Marvel's Spider-Man
5. Forza Horizon 4
6. Lego DC Super-Villains
7. Super Mario Party
8. Soulcalibur 6
9. Crash Trilogy
10. Shadow of the Tomb Raider

There's a lot of competition for people's attention and money. More so than ever before.

I think devs need to start having realistic expectations for their games. Soul Caliber 6 is a great game and a great franchise, but the fighting market is pretty crowded right now with Tekken, Street Fighter, MVC, and Fighter Z. With a new Smash coming soon too

Hard to say if this is even a problem, given that many games seem to sell better than their predecessors in the digital realm.

Not to say that I know one way or the other how the digital sales are going, but this just seems like yet more proof that physical sales are becoming a more and more worthless sales metric.

Physical sales haven't mattered for a long time now and Digital sales, however, are on the rise. And if Digital sales of this game are any indication, this game is a resounding success no matter how you look at it. I own SoulCalibur VI on Steam, so that should tell you something.

Doesn’t really tell all that much if digital sales aren’t taken into account. Even if the game is selling very well both on physical formats and digital it still saddens me to see physical sales declining because that is how I prefer to buy my games.

Hopefully digital sales are up. I'd like to see this series do well again.

Only reason I'd go back to physical copies is if they included manuals like the good ol days.

What's worse is, I don't know what the digital sales were, but the physical sales split was like 80/20 in favor of PS4 vs. Xbox. Also, UH oh, what's this...?

4. Marvel's Spider-Man

5. Forza Horizon 4

At this point.... why is physical sales down even a news story? We live and buy in a digital age, waiving around physical sales number in either a positive or negative fashion only tells a fraction of the story.

Physical sales down shouldn't be a surprise to anyone and should not be indicative of the failure or success of a game.

Lol, lemmings didn't you say last week Forza would outsell Spiderman?

Are we depending on sales from one country (the United Kingdom) to determine the sales overall of Soul Calibur 6 instead of worldwide sales? What makes the U.K. market more important for sales of this game than any other market?

There were people here literally cheering that Forza was beating Spider-Man in week freakin' 6... and then they jinxed it. LOL!

The memes will raise sales... Shit, some of those character recreations are fucking hilarious.

@elitegaming247: Genuinely. It's incredible, and i've seen dozens of popular creations. Literally the oddest, and smallest of copies.

This why Battlefield V avoided releasing close to RDR2 and COD. But damn amazing hold for Spidey.

I still need this game. This reminded me, I need to buy it.

Tis' good, although I hear the console versions have very long loading times.

The game is trash

So sharing, selling, borrowing, and being on sale more often than digital, those things don't make physical copies more appealing?

Lol, wonder if they'll reply to this thread. Lemmings usually avoid when they get owned, which is 100% of the time.

Soul Calibur has never been all that popular. Not sure why anyone would be surprised if it bombed.

The problem here is "physical" sales, not the game.

Lol physical sales! What a worthless metric to determine anything from!

Ouch. The fighting game genre is getting a bit saturated at this point. I just don't have the time to play them all. Also publishers have ruined their long term stability for short term profits. They'll just release a complete edition with all of the season pass content. This is why I'm waiting on DOA 6. I expect a plus or last round version at the end of 2019. So why should I buy on release?

it's difficult to really gauge a game's success exclusively off of physical sales in a single market imo. I'd wait to see what digital #'s are in places outside of just the UK before considering this one dead.

Not surprised. I couldn't care less about Soul Calibur. Also, a bad time to release the game when you're fighting for sales against Spiderman and Red Dead Redemption.

So because physical sales (disregarding digital sales) in the UK (alone) is below SC5, thats something to worry about? the game JUST came out, calm down OP lol.

The game looks rough as shit and not fluid at all when compared to Tekken.

After seeing gameplay I was turned off.

Plus that dude with the crotch spikes and he’s overzealous and ridiculous and also broken fighting style is childish.

That shit is just stupid.

I think RDR2 probably hurt sales for it. I canceled my SC6 preorder because I simply didn't have time to enjoy the game before RDR2 hit.

yea starlink also flopped in the UK.

came in at 14. guess they are not star fox fans? :P

Soul Calibur is a franchise that either gamers like or dislike.

Physical copies being on sale more then digital? Steam summer sales would like to have a word with you.

For me it ultimately comes down to convenience. Being the cave dweller that I am, I'd rather just download a game off steam then go to the store and pick it up. Also the no questions asked refund policy is pretty nice, I've probably saved myself 100$ using that.

Ugh, consoles consoles, we're not talking about steam here.

Eh, I can order physical copies to arrive the day of release. Maybe it's not instant gratification but it's on par with waiting for some 100 GB download.

It has character creation in the game, which is pretty cool.

I hope the next Mortal kombat game learns a thing or two from soulcaibur 6

i buy it after the price drop i love soul calibur games

Saturated time to release a game, and they kind of damaged the series with that last entry which was by far the poorest. I hope it picks up business though.

Yeah, one has to wonder if the situation will continue like this. I mean there are so many games these days, it seems like a lot of AAA-releases are cannibalizing sales of eachother.

That's what you get for releasing a game in October that's not as prominent as the big ones.

Also adding questionable DLC to your game doesn't help you.

Somebody told me to wait for a 'complete' version of Soul Calibur VI otherwise I would have already bought it.

I get what you're saying. But even for European sales numbers it's interesting that we use UK numbers. I guess the UK is the only European country releasing numbers? But the UK has a peculiar taste so I don't think it's a good basis.