Last week's UK physical sales show a strong debut for Civilization VII... On Nintendo Switch?

Although the game's best-selling platform was PS5, the boxed version for Nintendo's hybrid outsold the combined Xbox and PC sales.

Civlization VII has had a somewhat uneven early release, with player feedback encouraging Firaxis to quickly fix or switch to some of the new systems introduced to re-engage with its more dedicated audience. But other than that, the game is being well received by gamers and the market in general, as despite being "niche", Civilization VII has placed second in last week's list of best-selling games in the UK.

It was only beaten by EA Sports FC 25 (no surprise there), and also placed just ahead of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, which has just been confirmed to have reached two million copies in less than two weeks on sale. More surprisingly, the second best-selling physical version of the game was Nintendo Switch, with 27% of the total, according to GfK data provided by Nintendo Life.

What's more, the Switch version of Civilization VII outsells the combined sales of the PC and Xbox Series versions. While technically there are limitations, the Nintendo hybrid version holds up quite well in performance, but it's true that if you try to play in handheld mode the menus and precision with the controls when moving units or amounts of resources becomes a chore. The hardware installed base has worked much more in favour of this edition than the Xbox Series, which we have also learned sold less than 300,000 consoles in the whole of 2024 in Europe.

Have you tried Civilization VII? What did you think of its strong launch in the UK and on Switch version?