Nintendo Switch Sports is Europe's biggest game of May | European Market Report
Christopher Dring
Head of Games B2B
Thursday 9th June 2022
Over 7.9 million digital and physical games were sold across Europe, according to GSD.
It's a big drop of 29% compared with April, and down 21% compared with May 2021 (note: 2022 includes digital numbers for Bethesda and Gearbox) . The past four weeks has been severly lacking in new game releases, with not a single new release in the Top 20.
Almost 4.5 million of the games sold last month were via digital download stores.
Nintendo Switch Sports was No.1, purely based on the game's physical sales alone (Nintendo does not share digital figures). The game has been a particular hit in France and Germany, with the two countries representing over half of all copies sold across Europe. The game was also No.1 in Spain and Italy, whereas in the UK it was Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga at No.1 (to check out the UK report, click here).
Console supply issues ease
In terms of hardware, over 297,000 games machines were sold via tracked European countries (German and UK data is not included, for the UK market report click here). That's a drop of almost 3% over April and 3% lower compared with May last year.
New console sales (PS5 and Xbox Series X and S) in May 2022 across tracked European markets are higher by 26% month-on-month as supply constraints began to ease. For Nintendo Switch, sales were almost identical between May 2022 and May 2021, around the 135,000 mark.
So far this year the PS5 has come off worse. Sales for the PS5 in the first five months of 2022 are lower by half compared to this time last year. This is in comparison to the Xbox Series X and S, which has sold roughly the same numbers of units in 2022 compared with 2021. Meanwhile, Nintendo Switch has seen a
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