FIFA 19 defeats Red Dead Redemption in UK game sales for 2018

Last year proved to be a sensational one for video game publishers with console sales increasing and many games attracted huge sales figures.

The race for 2018's best-selling game in the UK was a tight one but there was one clear front-runner that managed to stay strong all the way to the finish line: FIFA 19.

While the likes of Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2) and God of War picked up multiple Game of the Year awards for 2018, no game was able to keep up with FIFA 19's physical sales in the UK.

The latest EA Sports title topped the charts of the best-selling physical games in the UK with a staggering 1.89 million boxed sales in 2018. Include digital sales and FIFA 19 was still the UK's top game with a sold of 2.5m copies sold in total.

While FIFA 19 is the top dog in the UK, it is still behind its predecessor FIFA 18 which sold just under 2.7m in total. FIFA 18 itself continued to sell well in 2018 with over 350,000 physical sales, putting it 10th in the overall 2018 charts.

Just outside of the top 10 would be the Pokemon: Let's Go set of games if you combined the sales of both the Pikachu and Eevee variants although the Pikachu edition itself did chart individually at 18th.

RDR2 wasn't far behind FIFA 19 with 1.75m sales in second place while Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 took third place with 1.17m sales. PlayStation 4's Spider-Man was the console exclusive with the most games sold, taking fourth place with over 676,000 sales.

Nintendo Switch exclusive Mario Kart 8 Deluxe completed the top five with around 458,000 sales - selling more than it did in 2017.

While FIFA 19 was the best-selling game in the UK last year, musical movie The Greatest Showman was the UK's top-performing entertainment product with 2.69m copies sold.

However, video games in the UK, excluding hardware sales such as consoles, generated £3.86 billion in sales last year - more than both the video (£2.34m) and music (1.33m) industries.

Console sales also increased in 2018 from 2017 with 2.4m units sold in the UK with PlayStation 4 the best-seller while the Nintendo Switch had the largest growth with a 20 per cent increase.