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UK Chart: Tomb Raider finishes top, SimCity enjoys strong launch

Tomb Raider reboot sets new sales record for the series and enjoys the best-selling opening weekend of the year so far.

By Martin Gaston on March 11, 2013 at 11:24AM PDT

Square Enix's reboot of Tomb Raider has topped the UK charts this week, comfortably beating Aliens: Colonial Marines to become the best-selling launch of 2013 so far.

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Tomb Raider's week one sales were over double what Aliens: Colonial Marines managed when it launched three weeks ago. Both games were released on a Tuesday and are therefore dubbed "event" titles by UK sales collator Chart-Track. Games in the UK traditionally launch on Friday.

All in all, developer Crystal Dynamics' new take on Lara Croft has set new opening-week sales records for the franchise, selling twice as many copies as Tomb Raider: Legend, the previous strongest launch for the series, managed way back in 2006.

EA's SimCity finished in second place, managing a strong launch despite a weekend of connectivity problems for its users. EA has promised anyone who tried to play SimCity over the weekend a free game, but hasn't given any more details yet.

Namco Bandai's Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 debuts in third place, with The Sims 3: University Life starting in fourth place. This is the first week in 2013 when four new games have occupied the top of the charts.

FIFA 13 is hanging on reliably in fifth, and Crysis 3--last week's chart topper--drops to sixth.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II is seventh, Far Cry 3 eighth, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance ninth, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is 10th.

The Top 20 UK charts for the week ending March 9:

1. Tomb Raider
2. SimCity
3. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3
4. The Sims 3: University Life
5. FIFA 13
6. Crysis 3
7. Call of Duty: Black Ops II
8. Far Cry 3
9. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
10. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
11. Assassin's Creed III
12. Need for Speed: Most Wanted
13. Skylanders Giants
14. Hitman Absolution
15. Aliens: Colonial Marines
16. Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes
17. Halo 4
18. Grand Theft Auto IV
19. Dead Space 3
20. Forza Horizon

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deactivated-5aaaf6313c856

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Edited By deactivated-5aaaf6313c856

Hell... how can a crappy company like EA gets to have 5 games in the top 20 in UK? Are gamers really stupid nowdays? Are they enjoying being mocked with DRM, Online only, microtransactions and stupid things like this? Damn, sometimes I just lose hope in humanity...

Upvote • 12 years ago

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@JFERNANDEZ84 I lose hope in your judgemental qualities, Internet stranger, for saying that you lose hope in humanity, based only on what games people buy :P.

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Edited By deactivated-5aaaf6313c856

@Hurvl @JFERNANDEZ84 Well, you know what they say... "you are what you eat"... I can make an analogy like this: "you are what you consume". Hell, it says for itself... right?

Upvote • 12 years ago

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deactivated-5aaaf6313c856

@Hurvl @JFERNANDEZ84 You can think whatever you want, pal. But it's true that buying this kind of games are making the gaming world worse as a whole. And when companies like EA threat gamers like idiots and people buy it like if they are ok with those insulting model of business, well, yeah, I think those kind of people like or don't mind being threated like stupid people.

Upvote • 12 years ago

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@JFERNANDEZ84 But one is not defined by the purchase of a single type of product and therefore it's incorrect to draw major conclusions on what games people buy. A person is the sum of many things and video games constitute a small percentage of that. Thus, I stand by my previous statement.

Upvote • 12 years ago

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SimCity will plummet hard next week.

Upvote • 12 years ago

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I'll get the new TR someday. But Sim City faring well? With that DRM, god help us all.

Upvote • 12 years ago

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@nintendoboy16 SimCity players are not the average gamers. Pretty sure most of them weren't aware how bad an always-online DRM could be.

Upvote • 12 years ago

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@duhNeighbour @nintendoboy16 Unfortunately lots of them only heard about the game because every news source was running stories about the outages all week. It doesn't matter if people are saying negative things, as long as you're getting that sort of blanket coverage, interest spikes.

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Edited By mhkguy

Tomb Raider no doubt deserves to be at top spot, This is by far the surprising Reboot and awsome game of the year 2013 this far, I really wish it sells millions of legit units worldwide, Support the developers

Upvote • 12 years ago

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@mhkguy I wouldn't say surprising, it looked good even back in 2011.

Upvote • 12 years ago

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Imagine if they just made SimCity without the dreadful DRM, I bet it would've been the biggest launch in a long time.

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@SandRunneR if only

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deactivated-5d4ea9243f8e0

I can't believe that SimCity is on top of the list after all the problems with the server problems. A strictly on-line game that I can't play because of the massive fail of customer service aka server ability is a bad game no matter what the developer says.

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@JulyAeon SimCity players are not the average gamers. Pretty sure most of them weren't aware how bad an always-online DRM could be.

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@JulyAeon A whole lot of pre-orders makes the game to have a strong launch. We'll see how well it thrives on the top-ten list with all its problems

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@pozium @JulyAeon At least justice has been served when it comes to Aliens: Colonial Marines. First it was number 1, then sales dropped 84 % and it was at number 5, now it's at number 15. SimCity is a mess for other reasons, though, and once the technical difficulties are over it could be fun to play for people who like those kinds of games.

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Edited By Hurvl

@pozium That's why I don't like MMORPG's, F2P titles or always-online-games, you can't play them for as long as you want. A lot of people play a game and then go to the next or might replay it for a few years and then get tired of it, but I'm not like that. I almost exclusively buy games that I will want to play for an indefinite amount of time. Therefore I want to be the one to decide when to stop playing them. I even prefer to get games from GoG over Steam when they have the same games. Steam won't last forever, although its shutdown is (or seems) far away in the future. Offline singleplayer are the only games I play and some are quite old, but they're still good. I've recently started playing Anachronox, from 2001, and I love that such an old, great game is still playable.

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@Hurvl @pozium @JulyAeon I was interested in the game initially, but when I heard always on-line, I got disinterested. The thing is, always online games are bound to die eventually. Right now, you can still play the original simcity, tombraider, soul reaver, and many more. Imagine if those games needed constant internet. Eventually, the servers would have to be shut down and that means that 10 years from now, if they feel that 'few' people are playing the game, they'll decide to shut down the server to make room for other games

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Edited By Nintendo_Man

Aliens has dropped quickly so negative reviews sure have hurt it so SimCity will probably suffer the same.

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@Nintendo_Man That is, unless EA finally fixes the game up.

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Edited By majere613

Study in contrasts, there. Tomb Raider absolutely deserves to be at #1- great writing, plays very well indeed and the story campaign isn't over in ten seconds. No silly microtransactions or DRM either.

Sim City, on the strength of EA's behaviour so far, should be on the bottom of the pile being teabagged by Colonial Marines. At least people who bought that dross can play the dross they paid for.

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Edited By HelghastUser

I just want to say that if Sim City climbs to the #1 spot after its terrible launch and treatment of its customers, then Gamers are to blame for all the negative effects that follow. That includes any and all tactics employed by EA whether it be Microtransactions, Always on DRM, Day 1 DLC or Disk locked DLC just to name a few. That is all....

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Edited By Hurvl

@HelghastUser The worst thing is that all gamers who dislike this are ignored because of all the people who obviously approve of it. It doesn't matter what you or a small minority thinks of this when so many others vote *for* it. All you can do is hope that it won't be as bad as it could be.

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@HelghastUser Don't worry, I'm pretty sure SimCity will plummet in next week's numbers.

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@HelghastUser And yet people still want more of that treatment, just look of top ten, reeks of EA. Last EA game i bought was Mass Effect 3 and didn´t do it lightly, just wanted to finish the damn series. No more money for those EA suckers ! Boycott, boycott.

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