Adele’s 25 album pips FIFA 16 to year’s biggest entertainment product

Adele’s 25 album pips FIFA 16 to year’s biggest entertainment product
James Orry Updated on by

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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