Adele’s 25 album was 2015’s biggest-selling entertainment product, outselling FIFA 16 by around 90,000 units, reports retail trade body ERA.
25 shifted 2,604,850 units, with FIFA selling 2,516,079 units, but EA’s sports title would be way out ahead in terms of revenue.
It’s worth noting that music sales include both retail and digital, whilst game sales are retail only, so FIFA 16 could well have sold more total units, but we just don’t know.
FIFA 16 was the first for five games to chart in the best-sellers list, followed by Call of Duty: Black Ops III (1.93m), Fallout 4 (1.1m), Star Wars Battlefront (1m) and GTA 5 (999k).
There was no place in the Top 20 for the likes of The Witcher 3, MGS 5 and Batman: Arkham Knight, meaning they sold fewer than 740,000 units in the UK. Minecraft is likely to have charted had the game not been sold under different titles for each platform.
Filling out the Top 10 were Paddington (1.18m), Jurassic World (1m), The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies (1m) and Ed Sheeran’s X (1m).
A look back over the past three years also reveals just how flat sales of major franchises FIFA and Call of Duty have become.
FIFA 14 – 2,656,763 units
FIFA 15 – 2,663,296 units
FIFA 16 – 2,516,079 units
Call of Duty Ghosts – 1,991,994
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare – 1,837,025
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 – 1,928,813
Also a big well done to Rockstar Games, with GTA 5 having charted in the Top 10 for three years running:
2013: No.1 – 3,670,234
2014: No.6 – 1,341,472
2015: No.10 – 998,726
Source: ERA
