By Luke Reilly Games Editor, IGN Australia
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth surged straight to the top of the charts in Australia and New Zealand last week. A PC game topping the retail charts is definitely a noteworthy result bearing in mind just how much of the PC gaming world has embraced digital downloads, though it’s not a surprising one considering the recent news that Battle for Azeroth is the fastest-selling World of Warcraft expansion to date.
The seventh expansion to Blizzard’s record-holding MMORPG, Battle for Azeroth racked up 3.4 million in day-one sales. Not a bad effort for a game released 14 years and seven prime ministers ago. Or maybe that’s eight, now. I’m nearly out of fingers.
Madden NFL 19 sank one spot, to second place. It’s still slightly puzzling to see such a niche sports game rank so highly down under but, again, it’s indicative of how otherwise quiet August has been this year.
First-person stealth and survival game We Happy Few is the only other new game to wrangle its way into the charts this week, and it finds itself in sixth spot. Developed by Compulsion Games (which was recently acquired by Microsoft) We Happy Few is set in a dystopian version of 1960s Britain, where players must escape from a town hooked on a hallucinogenic drug called Joy, which keeps the inhabitants unaware of the decay around them. We Happy Few was briefly refused classification in Australia back in May, during the lead-up to its release, but that effective ban was overturned upon review in July and the game has been released unmodified.
