2017’s Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Was 2021’s Best-Selling Boxed Game in the UK, Beating FIFA 22

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for the Nintendo Switch was the best-selling boxed game in the UK in 2021.

As covered recently, Nintendo’s ever-popular karting game already dominated boxed Black Friday sales in the UK, and as now reported by Gamesindustry.biz, the 2017 title has actually beaten boxed FIFA 22 sales to become the best-selling physical title in the UK of last year.

"Mario Kart 8: Deluxe was the final No.1 of 2021 for the UK boxed charts, finally knocking FIFA 22 off the top spot", GamesIndustry's Christopher Dring writes on Twitter. "Switch games held up well in the post-Christmas week, so it looks like a few people got Switch consoles on December 25th."

Initially, it was thought that FIFA would be taking first place in the boxed sales chart for 2021, but a steep sales drop caused the football game to fall the 2^nd place with sales for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe dropping considerably less after Christmas, and thereby claiming 1^st place. As reported by GamesIndustry, this marks the seventh time Nintendo’s karting game for the Switch has been No.1 in the UK boxed charts since its launch.

In total, there are five Nintendo Switch exclusives in the Top Ten (six if you include Just Dance 2022, which sees most of its sales on the Nintendo machine). Pokémon Brilliant Diamond is at No.6 (sales down 8%), Minecraft is at No.7 (down 38%), and Mario Party Superstars (down 14%) is at No.10. Just Dance 2022 dropped four places to No.8, with sales down 56%.

As always, it should be noted that this sales data only includes boxed game sales, and digital downloads aren’t included.

We’ve included the full list of boxed sales charts in the UK for the week ending January 1^st down below: