FIFA 19 sales plummet as users moan about defending, speed – and bicycle kicks

FIFA 19 may have received the usual round of stellar reviews, but it seems players are less than impressed with this year's offering.

Sales of physical copies of the game are down a quarter compared to launch week last year -- much more than you'd expect even as digital sales' share grows.

Gamers are slating it online, with players on Metacritic describing the game as "disgraceful", and collectively rating FIFA 19 a .

It's not faring much better on Microsoft's store either, with Xbox gamers rating it as low as 1.5 stars out of five at time of writing.

Many players on Twitter and the game's forum on Reddit have posted complaints about the inconsistency of defending in-game. A popular moan is that even the fastest attackers are having issues beating slow defenders, while the best centre halves will fail to jump for crosses and then watch  their opposite number leap and knock an improbable bicycle kick into the back of the net.

Shooting, meanwhile, is "crazy bad" according to one poster , while others are lambasting the lack of differentiation .

Sales figures for the UK from tracking body GfK showed that while FIFA 19 topped the charts to become the biggest-selling game of 2018 so far, 25 per cent fewer physical copies of the game were bought compared to the first week last year.

GfK only track physical copies and not digital downloads so some downturn is to be expected as vendors promote their digital channels, but the scale of decline is unexpected.

This is particularly because of the cut-throat nature of retail -- it is possible to get a physical copy of FIFA 19 for as little as £44, while a digital copy will set you back , and that's including the EA Access discount.

Two thirds of sales were for PlayStation 4 with just under a third coming on Xbox One. Nintendo Switch sales of the game amounted to around one per cent of total sales.

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