FIFA 21 UK physical launch sales down more than 42% over FIFA 20's

Penalty.

News by Wesley Yin-Poole Former Editor-in-Chief

Updated on 12 Oct 2020

FIFA 21 UK physical launch sales are down more than 42 per cent over FIFA 20's, according to a report from Eurogamer sister site GamesIndustry.biz.

While a significant number of sales will be digital (UK digital sales are expected later this week), it's a big drop for EA's premier sports game. So, what's up?

As GI points out, it may be the case that FIFA fans who plan on buying a next-gen console this November are waiting for FIFA 21 to come out on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. EA offers a free upgrade, dubbed Dual Entitlement, but perhaps the message has not reached everyone, or some players are put off by non-FUT and Volta progress not carrying over.

On 9th October - the day FIFA 21 went on general sale - EA put out a press release saying over 2.3 million players worldwide had already played the game via the 10-hour trial that came with an EA Play subscription, so early interest was certainly there.

And we can see how well FIFA 21 is doing on Steam (it's the first game in the series to launch on Valve's platform). At the time of publication, 15,843 were playing concurrently, putting FIFA 21 just behind The Witcher 3 and just above The Elder Scrolls Online. It peaked at 23,151 concurrent players.

Despite the physical drop, FIFA 21 is the biggest game launch of 2020 so far, beating The Last of Us 2 and Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

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