Hogwarts Legacy and Diablo 4 lead Europe's half year games charts

gamesindustry.biz:

76.1 million console and PC games were sold across Europe during the first half of the year, which is marginally up over the same period in 2022.

The UK was the biggest European market for game sales, representing 15.3 million games sold, a rise of 5.5% over the same period in 2022. This is followed by Germany with 14 million games sold (down 11%) and then France with 11.1 million sales (up 8%). Spain delivered 5.4 million game sales (up 6.8%), while Italy is just behind with 4.9 million (up 2.7%).

Overall 29.1 million physical games were sold across Europe, a drop of 9% year-on-year. 47 million games were sold via digital download stores, which is a rise of 7%.

This is based on GSD data, and includes physical game sold in major European markets, and digital game sales from almost all major publishers across every European country (Nintendo the notable absentee here). Digital games from indie developers and publishers are also not included. For full details on what is counted, check the foot of the article.

Hogwarts Legacy is comfortably the biggest selling game for the first half of the year across Europe. Its sales are 69% bigger than what Elden Ring managed over the same period, which was the best-selling game during the first half of 2022.

Overall, it was a strong half of the year for the big brands. Diablo 4, despite only being on sale for a few weeks when this data was counted, is already the third biggest game of the year. Meanwhile, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom at No.4 sold 13% more copies than Pokémon Legends: Arceus managed during the first half of last year (note: Pokémon launched in January, while Zelda arrived in May). Nintendo doesn't share digital data with GSD, so Zelda performance is