Donkey Kong Bananzawas released a little more than a week ago, and with no more big video games coming until the end of August, you might have assumed DK’s celebrated new adventure would sit at the top of the charts unopposed for the next few weeks. What you foolishly didn’t account for isMario Kart WorldbecomingNintendo’s new juggernaut, just like its predecessor.
The combination of physical and digital sales, numbers in different countries, and certain studios not sharing sales numbers at all makes figuring out what the best-selling games are each week pretty tricky. However, UK sales data is shared every week, giving us a good idea of the bigger picture, and as revealed via data shared by GfK (thanks,Nintendo Life), Bananza’s reign at the top of the chart has ended after just one week.
Mario Kart World has already knocked Donkey Kong Bananza off the top of the sales chart
Last week’s data revealed that, unsurprisingly, Bananza shot to the top of the UK physical chart during its launch week, althoughits sales were half of Super Mario Odyssey’s during its own first week. Mario has rocked up to make DK feel even worse this week as Mario Kart World is back on top, knocking Bananza down to number two.
This is probably the first indicator that Mario Kart World is going to have staying power, potentially in the same way asMario Kart 8 Deluxe. Not only has the original Switch’s Mario Kart game sold 68 million copies and counting, but people arestillbuying it in their droves. It was the eighth best-selling game in the UK last week. That’s the 2017 Mario Kart game that has been replaced by a newer Mario Kart game that you play on a system that has been replaced by a newer console.
A combination of how well theSwitch 2has been selling and how hard they are to find almost certainly has a lot to do with that. There’s a Mario Kart World bundle that gets you the $80 game for $50, and the sales of that bundle are presumably included in the game’s sales data. As for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, that’s the only option for people who want to play Mario Kart and haven’t bought a Switch 2 yet.
Just because Bananza doesn’t have what it takes to keep up with Mario Kart World’s sales, that doesn’t mean it isn’t going to be a huge Switch 2 success. Mario Kart World will be the game that almost everyone with a Switch 2 owns. While I wish the same for Bananza, I know that won’t be the case, but it’s still good enough that it will sell incredibly well. That said, if you have a Switch 2, you really should buy Bananza if you can. It’s a Game of the Year contender.
