Splatoon 3 topped the UK retail sales chart in its first week, despite selling fewer copies than its predecessor.
While we wait for the full ranking, Christopher Dring of GamesIndustry has discovered that Splatoon 3 has sold 9% fewer physical copies than the previous chapter of the series did at launch.
It should be noted that, in comparison to 2017, the year of Splatoon 2’s release, digital purchases have climbed dramatically, lowering physical copy sales. However, the number of Nintendo Switch owners now is far higher than it was five years ago.
According to Dring, the reason is that the Nintendo Switch shooter is just less popular in the UK than in other countries, and hence this figure does not represent global sales. As proof of this, Nintendo reported today that 3.45 million copies of Splatoon 3 were acquired in Japan alone in the first three days of release, breaking any previous record set by a Switch game.
As expected, Splatoon 3 is No.1 in the UK physical charts. Boxed launch sales are 9% lower than Splatoon 2’s launch in 2017. The UK isn’t the biggest market for this series, so I wouldn’t draw any global conclusions
— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) September 11, 2022