Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Beaten to No. 1 in UK Charts by Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

Every year when a new Call of Duty game launches, it topping sales charts in the UK (and really, almost everywhere else) is more or less a foregone conclusion- but this year has seen an unprecedented turn of events. As revealed by GamesIndustry’s Christopher Dring over on Twitter, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has actually been beaten to the top of the weekly boxed video game sales charts in the UK by Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

As Dring points out, that’s probably more down to the fact that Assassin’s Creed has sold very well (which Ubisoft has suggested as well) than it is a reflection on any perceived drop in Call of Duty’s sales. It’s also worth mentioning that these charts only account for physical sales, and Black Ops Cold War may very well have outpaced all other games when digital sales are counted as well.

Dring also mentions that Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ PS5 version was the third highest selling game of the week- which is funny, since the PS5 isn’t even out yet in the UK, and won’t be until November 19.

The full UK charts will be going live soon, and we’ll have them for you as always, so stay tuned.

For the first time in about 80 years, Call of Duty is not No.1 in the UK physical charts during the week it came out… in a major week for game sales, Assassin’s Creed is the biggest boxed game

— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) November 15, 2020

I’ve not done a full analysis, but I suspect it’s more to do with Assassin’s Creed doing really well, rather than anything about CoD. CoD may well have done more digitally

— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) November 15, 2020

It’s Miles. The PS5 version is the third biggest individual SKU of the week

— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) November 15, 2020