European Video Game Sales Experience Significant Uptick in August

According to recent data from GSD, a total of 10.7 million video games were sold across Europe in the previous month, marking a 29% increase from the same period last year. This notable growth is particularly impressive considering that the highly anticipated game Baldur's Gate 3 is not included in the data, as its publisher Larian is not part of the GSD panel. Instead, FIFA 23 takes the top spot, with a significant spike in sales on the Nintendo Switch, largely due to a promotion on the Nintendo eShop. Grand Theft Auto 5 follows closely, with a 40% increase in sales compared to August 2022, primarily driven by promotional activities on the PlayStation 5. The best-selling games for the month, when considering single-platform sales, were The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Mario Kart 8: Deluxe, demonstrating another strong month for Nintendo across Europe. The new game Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon charted highly, just behind Hogwarts Legacy at number four, with the From Software title performing exceptionally well in the UK, where sales were nearly double those in Germany and three times higher than in France. Red Dead Redemption re-entered the charts at number eleven, following its release on the PS4 and Nintendo Switch, with the PS4 version accounting for nearly two-thirds of the sales. Quake 2, which received an updated release with additional levels across all platforms, narrowly missed the top twenty, jumping to number twenty-three. In terms of console sales, while not all markets are tracked by GSD, the countries that are tracked saw a 67% increase in hardware sales compared to August last year, primarily driven by the PlayStation 5, which experienced a remarkable 197% sales increase over the same period last year, a significant recovery from the stock shortages faced in Europe last year. The Nintendo Switch continued to perform well, with sales up by just under 1% compared to the same period last year. However, Xbox Series S and X saw a decline in sales, down by nearly 12% compared to the same period in 2022, a trend that is expected to reverse with the launch of new hardware and the highly anticipated game Starfield in September. Accessories sales also saw a significant increase of 36% year-on-year, largely attributed to the strong sales of the PS5 DualSense controller, which saw a 170% spike in sales due to the improved sales of the PS5 console. The GSD digital data encompasses games from major participating companies, including Activision Blizzard, Bandai Namco, and Electronic Arts, among others, and covers sales in numerous countries across Europe. Physical data, on the other hand, includes all games sold in specific European countries, while console hardware sales and accessories sales cover a slightly different set of markets.