Black Ops Holds Off the Cataclysm in the UK

Call of Duty: Black Ops remains the best-selling game of the week in the UK, even beating out the fastest-selling PC game of all time.

ChartTrack has released its weekly All-Format UK Sales Chart, and it isn’t exactly surprising to some familiar faces at the top of the list. Call of Duty: Black Ops and FIFA 11 take first and second place respectively, with newcomer World of Warcraft: Cataclysm at third ahead of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, and–

–wait, what? Earlier today we reported that Cataclysm had become the fastest-selling PC game of all time, selling 3.3 million copies in its first 24 hours on sale. And yet ChartTrack says that it was outsold by both the month-old CoD BlOps and the two-month-old FIFA 11? That doesn’t make any sense.

While it’s kind of amusing to imagine that maybe people living in the UK just don’t play WoW like the rest of the world, the logical answer is this: ChartTrack only tracks brick-and-mortar retail sales. Cataclysm was the first WoW expansion to be sold online at the moment of launch, and it’s likely that a good number of hardcore WoW junkies bought the game virtually so that they wouldn’t have to waste time driving home from the store and installing it from a disc.

The rest of the list comes as no surprise whatsoever, but here it is:

1.) Call of Duty: Black Ops
2.) FIFA: 11
3.) World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
4.) Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
5.) Gran Turismo 5
6.) Just Dance 2
7.) Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
8.) Donkey Kong Country Returms
9.) Professor Layton and the Lost Future
10.) Wii Fit Plus

(ChartTrack)