Anthem’s physical sales in the UK are down on those of BioWare’s last release, Mass Effect: Andromeda by half, Eurogamer reports.
It’s worth noting that physical sales as a whole have been on the decline since Andromeda released back in 2017, and that Anthem’s numbers are probably a little healthier when you factor in digital sales/EA Origin… but half of of what Andromeda managed still isn’t a great start, whichever way you cut it.
This is especially worse when you factor in that Andromeda only managed half the physical sales that Mass Effect 3 managed in its launch week, and it’s no secret that Andromeda didn’t exactly end up setting the world alight.
For further comparison, Anthem shifted around a quarter of Destiny 2‘s first week physical sales. Both are online games, so it’s make sense that physical sales would be less, of course.
Eurogamer also points out that Anthem had worse physical sales than both Kingdom Hearts 3 and Resident Evil 2, but these are established franchises whereas Anthem is a new IP, so we have to cut it some slack there.
The full UK physical top 10 is as follows, if you were wondering:
- Anthem
- Far Cry: New Dawn
- FIFA 19
- Rootin’ Pootin’ Cowboy Fruitin’ 2
- Metro: Exodus
- Forza Horizon 4
- New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
- COD BLOPS 4
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Anthem has been met with some pretty middling reviews since launch, with a Metacrtic score of 61 and a user score of 4.2, based on 1956 ratings.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.