Ghost of Yotei didn't manage to beat out EA Sports FC in its debut week, but it marks PlayStation's best launch in Europe since 2023's Spider-Man 2.
Ghost of Tsushima may have been overshadowed critically by the release of The Last of Us 2 the previous month, but it turned out to be a massive success, selling around 13 million copies as of September 2024 (compared to The Last of Us 2's 10 million copies sold as of 2022). So it's no surprise that its follow-up, Ghost of Yotei, has kept some of that momentum and has done pretty well itself.
According to The Game Business analyst Christopher Dring, in Europe, Ghost of Yotei debuted at number 2 in the European charts this week, having "narrowly missed out on No.1" thanks to EA Sports FC 26's third week at the top. However, despite not nabbing the top slot, Dring notes that Ghost of Yotei is "the biggest first-party PlayStation launch since Spider-Man 2 in October 2023."
Since Spider-Man 2, PlayStation has published Helldivers 2 (which, in the long run, was extremely successful), Concord, Astro Bot, and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. And while it was a given it would beat out Concord, beating out two critical darlings like Astro Bot and Death Stranding 2 (despite both games having better critical reception) is no easy feat.
That's just for Europe too; for comparison, the game reportedly sold 120,196 copies in Japan. Second place went to the Super Mario Galaxy double pack, with 48,265 copies sold (while Push Square notes that this year's other big samurai RPG, Assassin's Creed Shadows, only sold 17,700 copies in its first week).
Ghost of Yotei studio Sucker Punch "can only do one thing at a time," admits co-founder – and that's why the "really important" decision of its next game is so hard: "It kind of has to be your best idea, right?"
