Titanfall Doubles Xbox One Sales In UK

Titanfall's launch is great news for the Xbox One over in the UK. Retail researchers GfK Chart-Track say that the game's first-place debut led to a 96% jump in Xbox One sales compared to the prior week.

To celebrate Titanfall's release, Microsoft created a special Xbox One bundle with a free digital copy of the game. This bundle proved to be a popular purchase. It accounted for 70% of the Xbox One hardware sold last week, according to Chart-Track. It makes sense. If you're going to buy an XB1, why not get a free game with it?

Microsoft also recently slashed the price of the Xbox One in the UK. The console now costs £399.99, down from £429.99.

"We feel the time is right now to do this because Titanfall is coming out," Microsoft's Harvey Eagle said at the time. "It's the game that most gamers are looking forward to playing, and we think that this is a great time to offer this new price point moving forwards, and include the game while stocks last."

Titanfall isn't an Xbox One exclusive (it's available on PC as well and coming to Xbox 360) but Microsoft has marketed it like one. It's not coming to the PS4 so Microsoft saw the game as an opportunity to convince gamers to buy their next-gen console instead of Sony's. It's still too early to say that whether the game is closing the gap between PS4 and XB1 sales but the early data from the UK seems encouraging at least.

The strong sales debut for Titanfall is good news for EA as well. They now have the two best-selling 2014 titles so far, the other being FIFA 14. Titanfall's sales last week doubled the total that FIFA 14 racked up in Week 1 of the year. EA's last non-FIFA game that topped the weekly charts was Crysis 3 a year ago.

The second-highest game on the sales charts last week was Dark Souls 2, which launched on the same day as Titanfall. DS2's first week of sales was 20% higher than that of its predecessor. The increase can probably be attributed to word-of-mouth from the first Dark Souls and Namco's aggressive marketing. The Souls series is carving out a growing niche for itself in the RPG genre.

Here's the full top 10 list for UK sales last week:

1. TITANFALL
2. DARK SOULS II
3. SOUTH PARK: THE STICK OF TRUTH
4. THE LEGO MOVIE VIDEOGAME
5. THIEF
6. FIFA 14
7. PLANTS VS ZOMBIES: GARDEN WARFARE
8. CALL OF DUTY: GHOSTS
9. MINECRAFT: XBOX 360 EDITION
10. BATTLEFIELD 4