Fighting games can perform really great commercially, and the launch of Tekken 8 is further evidence of this. Last week, Bandai Namco’s latest title became the UK’s best-selling physical release.
According to GfK, Tekken 8 debuted at #1 on the UK Boxed Charts for the week ending January 27 and dethroned Hogwarts Legacy, which dropped to #7. It is followed by another Japanese game, Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth.
GamesIndustry.biz’s Christopher Dring noted that Tekken 8’s physical sales in the UK more than doubled the launch of Street Fighter 6.
Below are GfK’s top 10 best-selling physical games in the UK:
- Tekken 8
- Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (↑4)
- EA Sports FC 24 (↓2)
- Super Mario Bros. Wonder (↓1)
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (↑4)
- Hogwarts Legacy (↓6)
- Mortal Kombat 1 (↓3)
- Grand Theft Auto V (↑2)
- Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (↓6)
Launched on January 26, Tekken 8 received critical acclaim, with an average score on Metacritic ranging from 87 (Xbox) to 93 (PC). This makes it the second highest-rated game in the franchise, behind only Tekken 3 (96).
Player reception was also favorable. On Steam, Tekken 8 currently holds a “Very Positive” rating, with 90% of the 4,634 user reviews being positive. According to SteamDB, it peaked at 49,977 concurrent players — way above Tekken 7’s peak of 18.9k CCU.
This is also the third-best launch on the platform this month. The two leaders of 2024 so far are open world survival title Enshrouded (160.4k CCU) and smash hit Palworld (2.1k million CCU).
Among 1,556 games with the “Fighting” tag on Steam, Tekken 8 already ranks 7th in terms of peak CCU. It didn’t reach the heights of Capcom’s Street Fighter 6 (70.5k CCU), but managed to surpass the launch of NetherRealm’s Mortal Kombat 1 (38.1k CCU).
Tekken 8 also currently ranks 6th in peak CCU among games published by Bandai Namco, between Tales of Arise (60.2k CCU) and My Hero Ultra Rumble (46.5k CCU). Interestingly, the top 3 titles — Elden Ring, Dark Souls III, and Dark Souls II — were all developed by FromSoftware.
Top 15 Bandai Namco games by peak CCU (via SteamDB)
Bandai Namco has yet to disclose the sales of Tekken 8, so it is interesting to see where it would rank compared to the genre’s two other titans. For example, Mortal Kombat 1 sold nearly 3 million copies (as of November 2023), while Street Fighter 6 crossed the 3 million mark earlier this month.