Europe has seen a noticeable drop in console sales this year due to limited stock availability.
The report comes from GamesIndustry.biz, which states that just over 2million consoles have been sold across European countries so far this year (not counting the UK and Germany), which marks a 21 per cent drop from last year.
Sony’s latest PlayStation 5 console has seen the biggest hit to its sales, dropping by a substantial 44 per cent, but it still remained the second most popular across Europe. Meanwhile, direct competitor Xbox Series X|S saw a nine per cent sales increase, while the Nintendo Switch’s sales had a seven per cent boost. It’s also noted that the Switch remains the most popular, although Nintendo hasn’t dealt with the same stock shortages.
Accessories sold also took a dip, although only by 4.2 percent, with 8.6million add-on products being sold overall. These included controllers, headsets, and toys-to-life products such as amiibo. While Sony saw a dip in its PlayStation 5 sales, DualSense controller sales went up by 53 per cent, with this being attributed to the launch of the new colour variants. Meanwhile, PlayStation 4 Dualshock controllers took the second place spot.
While hardware has struggled, software has continued to soar, with 76.1million games being sold overall across Europe, including the UK and Germany (a 13.5 per cent raise from last year). 32million of these were physical copies while the remaining 44million were digital. The majority of sales came from Germany with 15.4million games being sold there. Meanwhile, 14.3million were sold in the UK while 10.2million were sold in France.
FromSoftware’s smash hit Elden Ring continues to sit as the best-selling game of the year in Europe, being tailed by FIFA 22 and Pokémon Legends: Arceus in the second and third spots.
In other news, Guerrilla Games is shutting down servers for three of its games this August, including two Killzone titles.