Top 20 UK video game sales are 38% physical
A new chart from the Entertainment and Retail Association has revealed the digital and physical sales splits for the 20 best-selling games in the UK.
The data is based on GSD and GfK figures, and shows that there is still a substantial number of games sold via physical stores.
EA Sports FC 24, which was the best-selling game in the UK last year, sold 2.395 million units in 2023. 67.2% of the sales (1.61 million) came via PlayStation Network, Steam, Xbox Live and Nintendo eShop, while 786,000 (32.8%) came via physical outlets, including Amazon, GAME and Tesco.
It's a similar number for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (No.3), which saw 69% of its 1.24 million sales come via digital shops.
However, Hogwarts Legacy (No.2) was a lot more physical friendly, with just 56% of its 1.92 million sales coming via digital stores.
And there are some games that even did better as a physical retail release than a digital one, with over 53% of Spider-Man 2 sales coming via physical stores (note: digital codes sold with hardware counts as a physical release).
If we remove Nintendo games from the list (which are only tracked physically due to Nintendo's reluctance to share digital data), 38% of the Top 20 games were sold via boxed game retailers.
Top 20 Combined UK Chart with Digital Split
*Physical data GfK. Digital data GSD. Nintendo does not supply digital data. All Physical Stores. PSN, Xbox Live Arcade, eShop and PC Steam digital stores.
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