'Horizon Forbidden West' Is The PS5's Second-Biggest Launch In The UK

"Horizon Forbidden West" is proving to be one of the best-selling games for the PS5 early in its life cycle.

(Photo : Guerilla Games)
horizon forbidden west screen

According to Eurogamer, "Forbidden West" is now the second-biggest game launch for Sony's current-gen console in terms of overall boxed game sales, specifically in the UK. It managed to beat the launch title "Spider-Man: Miles Morales" for the honor, with 68 percent of all boxed sales on the PlayStation 5 and the remainder on the last-gen PS4 systems.

However, despite this achievement, it still fell short of the current big winner, "Pokemon Legends: Arceus," whose boxed game sales are twice that of Guerilla Games' latest open-world opus.

The Nintendo Switch exclusive, whose sales are actually down 52% week-on-week, is still 2022's fastest-selling game.

However, the figure doesn't include digital downloads yet. Once the numbers come out by the end of the week, these sales could be higher, as "Horizon Forbidden West" is actually lagging behind predecessor "Zero Dawn" in terms of early sales, according to GamesIndustry.biz.

Here are the games in the top 10 of the UK charts as of this writing:

"Horizon Forbidden West"
"Pokemon Legends: Arceus"
"Dying Light 2"
"Mario Kart 8 Deluxe"
"FIFA 22"
"Animal Crossing: New Horizons"
"Call of Duty: Vanguard"
"Minecraft"
"Mario Party Superstars"
"Just Dance 2022"

It also seems like the sales numbers for "Forbidden West" coincided with the release of more PS5 consoles, according to Tech Times. As such, Sony's intention to keep ramping up the production of their current-gen systems can still bump the game's numbers up within the foreseeable future.

Why Are Boxed Sales For 'Horizon Forbidden West' So High?

With just how popular digital game storefronts have been for the past few years, one might wonder why physical game sales are still up. But maybe explaining this feat isn't too hard.

In an article by GameRanx, it was revealed that most PS5 owners prefer buying physical games over digital ones-51% of them, to be exact. As such, you could conclude that these people own the disc version of Sony's console and not t

(Photo : Olly Curtis/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
A Sony PlayStation 5 DualSense controller, taken on October 29, 2020.

According to GamesIndustry.biz, there could be one good reason for this: the high starting price tag for new PS5 games, which is $70. This tends to make users prefer to "invest" in getting a physical item, which combined with their preference to build a physical library that they can potentially resell or lend to friends.

'Forbidden West' Is An Absolute DREAM On The PS5

Now that's out of the way, another possible explanation as to why "Forbidden West" sold excellently on the PS5 is simple: it runs like a dream on the new-gen console.

Guerilla Games ensured that they took advantage of the console's far more powerful hardware. The result is a silky-smooth native 4K 60FPS experience, which is something you need to see to believe.

Story posted on GameNGuide

Written by RJ Pierce