Fallout 76 sales down 82% on Fallout 4, Hitman 2 down 90% on Hitman: Absolution

Pokémon: Let's Go wins first place in terms of sales, ahead of Spyro.

The latest video games have been busy, but with so many releases at the same time, there have inevitably been winners and losers. Although the inability of British cards to track digital sales, combined with the bizarre way of ranking Chart-Track's Pokémon games, makes things even more complicated than usual.

The best-selling video game of last week was Pokémon: Let's go, Pikachu! and let's go Eevee! but unlike other chart makers around the world, Chart-Track views them as separate versions, even in all-format graphics.

In America, the game is the most pre-ordered title of Switch, but in the UK, sales have dropped 60% compared to Pokémon Sun and Moon on the 3DS. Although direct comparisons are not particularly useful given the breadth of the 3DS usage base and the increase in digital sales. The game itself is also a remake, rather than a master suite, and, to add to the complications, Nintendo has had some stock issues, some stores being out of stock and some preorders missing.

The other big winner of the week was also a remake adapted to the families of a video game of the 90's. Given the divisional vote on Pokémon, it was the Spyro Reignited trilogy, which climbed to the top. Ranking rank of all formats. Unlike the Stableemate Crash Bandicoot N. Sane trilogy, the game was launched on both Xbox One and PlayStation 4, but 75% of sales went to Sony format.

Fallout 76 was the third strongest entry of the week, a comparison difficult to compare directly to its predecessor as it is a spin-off online only and not a sequel. Given its online nature, it is also likely that the percentage of digital sales generated is higher than normal, although an 82.4% drop from Fallout 4 in 2015 seems severe in every respect.

The only good thing for the Bethesda publisher is that because of its higher price, compared to the two remakes, it generated the most revenue from all games in the UK last week.

There does not seem to be a good side for Hitman 2, which is only one of the top 10 formats. Again, it is difficult to compare sales to those of its direct predecessor, in this case because it was published episodically, but compared to 2012. Hitman: Absolution, which usually has a bad reputation among fans of the franchise, saw its sales fall by 90%.

Hitman 2 was even beaten in the multiple formats chart by Fortnite: Deep Freeze Bundle, the very first commercial version of the game that saw sales split almost perfectly between the three console formats.

Overall, the week was tough for the new releases and the results once again challenge the logic of the publisher who wants to release as many games at the same time. The Christmas rush has been a phenomenon for decades and yet, companies never seem to learn to publish more niche titles at a time when people only have the time and money needed to one or two big games.

The inability of the UK charts to track digital sales is also confusing. Even if some of these declines are so extreme that they do not boil down to a general migration to the digital download, it will be a relief when Chart-Track starts incorporating digital sales next year.