Last month, the sales of games in Europe dropped by 19% compared to the same period last year, with 12.1 million copies sold. This data is according to GSD, which monitors physical game sales across major European countries, along with digital game sales from most major AAA publishers.
This decline is primarily attributed to the absence of a comparable game to Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which was a big hit last January. However, FIFA, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Red Dead Redemption 2 all fared better in January this year than the year before.
Nevertheless, sales of Mario Kart 8: Deluxe dropped by 37% from the previous year.
Games that contributed to this
New games in the charts included EA’s Dead Space remake at No.6, which arrived just over a month after The Callisto Protocol, a game similar to Dead Space made by some of the game’s original developers. The Callisto Protocol did better in its first two weeks than Dead Space, even without digital (The Callisto Protocol publisher Krafton is not part of the digital panel).
Other new releases in the charts were mainly Japanese-centric games, which is typical for this time of year. Forspoken, a PS5 game, was at No.11, followed by Nintendo’s Fire Emblem Engage (no digital data for Fire Emblem) and Bandai Namco’s One Piece Odyssey at No.16.
Console Sales
Regarding console sales, 493,000 game machines were sold across tracked European markets in January (excluding the UK and Germany). There was a 15.5% rise in sales compared to last January, primarily due to a massive 202% increase in PS5 sales across the continent. PS5 was the top-selling console of the month, followed by Nintendo Switch (sales down 11% compared to January 2022) and then Xbox Series X and S (sales down 32%).
In terms of accessories, 1.76 million add-on products were sold across tracked markets, a drop of 2.1% from the previous month, and the PS5 DualSense controller was the best-selling accessory. 1.37 million points and subscription cards were sold across Europe last month, a drop of 4% from January 2022.
