January game sales fall as PS5 and Xbox stock shortages continue | UK Monthly Charts
Christopher Dring
Head of Games B2B
Tuesday 15th February 2022
There was a sharp decline in sales of games, consoles and accessories during January.
2.29 million video games were sold in the UK last month, the latest GSD data shows (which covers all physical games and digital games from most AAA publishers).
It's a drop of 10% over the same period last year. January 2021 benefitted from continue strong sales of the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Grand Theft Auto 5, primarily via digital platforms.
The year's January sales was driven by Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which was comfortably the best-selling game of the month. This is despite the fact that Nintendo only shares physical sales (so Pokémon's digital sales are not counted).
In fact, thanks to Pokémon, physical game sales in January are actually ever-so-slightly up compared with the same period the month before.
January is a typically quiet month for game releases, and this year was no exception. The next biggest new release of the month was Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection for PS5. The game reached No.8.
Over in hardware, GfK panel data shows that nearly 122,000 games consoles was sold in the UK during January, which is a drop of 18.4% compared with the previous year.
This is down to reduced availability for the Xbox Series S|X and PS5 consoles. Also, PS4 and Xbox One consoles were still selling units in January last year, whereas this year both older machines have slowed substantially.
Nintendo Switch, which was the No.1 console of the month, actually posted a 35% increase in sales compared with the same period last year. It was the only platform to grow year-on-year.
Xbox Series S|X was the second best-selling console of January, The vast majority of sales was
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