In the UK however, Red Dead Redemption 2’s successful launch weekend wasn’t the best in the region this year. According to MVCUK, FIFA 19 still holds the title for the best weekend launch in the UK for 2018 when taking physical sales into account.

However, the silver lining in Rockstar’s newest release coming in second place is its comparison to the launch of Red Dead Redemption, with sales roughly doubling those of the 2010 game. In respect to this past weekend, Red Dead Redemption 2, of course, was the best selling game in the UK, followed by Call of Duty Black Ops 4, and FIFA 19.

There are a number of factors to take in when looking for an explanation on these numbers. First, with the popularity of soccer around the world, it makes sense why FIFA 19 would be selling so well in other parts of the globe outside of the United States, where Red Dead Redemption 2 was surely also the best-selling game this weekend. Another factor to take into account is the shift in the physical and digital markets the past few years, and with pre-loads for Red Dead Redemption 2 starting a week before the game’s release, there’s a case to be made that some people possibly caved into buying the game digitally so they wouldn’t have to wait for their two-disc physical copies to download onto their hard drives.

Given the UK listing does not include total digital copies sold, there is still a chance Red Dead Redemption 2 had a better opening weekend than FIFA 19 in terms of total sales. The last reason, which may have a bigger impact when specifying physical copies sold, is the exclusion of smaller, independent game stores not receiving copies for launch day due to higher shipment demands.

Even though the mentioned sales numbers for Red Dead Redemption 2 are confined to one form of purchase in a specific region, the long-term plans Rockstar has for the game remove most of the cause for concern. With the holidays slowly approaching, sales will start to ramp up by the end of November into Christmas. This timeline works perfectly for Rockstar, as the public beta for Red Dead Online will roll out around the same time.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is now available for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Source: MCVUK