Assassin’s Creed Valhalla prevents Call of Duty from launch-week boxed No. 1 for first time in 13 years

Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Valhalla has achieved an impressive feat over the weekend, preventing Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War from reaching the number one spot in the boxed retail charts in its launch week for the first time in 13 years.

As per GamesIndustry.biz, the past week was one of the biggest in video game history, with both games—plus, of course, the Xbox Series X|S consoles— launching last week, and had already reported more than double the launch day player numbers of its predecessor. These figures are for the physical version of the game rather than a digital release, but it's still very impressive all the same.

There are, of course, some things to be noted—Assassin's Creed Valhalla released on the Tuesday, while Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War didn't launch until Friday, and because England is currently in lockdown due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic meaning most game stores are closed there's no doubt this may have had some effect on people choosing to buy the game physically as opposed to digitally. However, as GamesIndustry.biz notes in their write up, physical sales of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War in the UK are apparently 64% down on last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which is still a surprisingly large amount.

That being said, Activision Blizzard did release a statement today saying that their game has "set a new record as the highest first day digital sales worldwide in franchise history"—and with the game being cited as one of the reasons for "record broadband use" in the UK last week, it's very possible Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War might have made up that deficit in digital sales. We'll have to wait a little longer to find out. 

Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War are both available now for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 and PC.