European hardware/software sales for 2022 revealed

The crown goes to Nintendo once again

12 January 2023
by rawmeatcowboy 4
image

Earlier in the week, we got a look at how well Nintendo did in the UK for 2022. Today gives us a much bigger picture, thanks to data for all of Europe. Not surprisingly, the Switch and its games came out on top pretty much everywhere.

First up, let’s take a look at the top 20 games across Europe for 2022. Keep in mind this list combines digital and physical sales, but Nintendo doesn’t report digital numbers for their software.

image

After that, we have the top 10 physical game sales in Europe.

image

Finally, we have the top 10 digital game sales across Europe in 2022.

image

As usual, we also have a more specific breakdown on game sales, along with data on hardware sales in general. You can find those bullet points below.

  • new game sales increased year-on-year by 16%
  • Switch sales were down year-on-year
  • 159 million console and PC games were sold across tracked European markets in 2022
  • game sales dropped 7.1% over the year before
  • 82.5 million games were sold via digital downloads
  • 76.6 million games were sold via physical retailers
  • If Pokémon Scarlet and Violet sales were combined, the game would be #6
  • Pokémon Scarlet/Violet’s sales were 13% bigger year-on-year than Diamond/Pearl
  • Pokémon Scarlet/Violet were 8% bigger than Pokémon Sword/Shield
  • UK was the No.1 games market across Europe (game sales down 6% year-on-year)
  • Germany was the No.2 games market across Europe (game sales down 13%)
  • France was the No.3 games market across Europe (game sales down 3%)
  • Germany and France were the strongest markets for Nintendo Switch titles
  • for tracked territories, 5.3 million consoles were sold last year, a drop of 25%
  • Switch was comfortably the No.1 console, despite sales falling by 15% year-over-year
  • Switch was No.1 in almost every country, minus Denmark, Sweden, & Norway
  • with peripherals (including toys-to-life), sales were down 10% to 18 million
  • Switch Joy-Con were the No.3 best-selling peripheral (sales down 23.7%)
Thanks to Sligeach_eire for the heads up!

Add Comment

Comments (4)

kuribo

1+ y ago

A worthy victory again for Nintendo


linktheviking

1+ y ago

Don’t know why Nintendo doesn’t report digital numbers? Digital sales out paced physical it seems overall by a few million but that does include PC which is like 100% digital itself. Nintendos last fiscal report state just under 40% of all software sales were digital and MS and Sony report similar so definitely PC skewing digital into the majority here.

What has Scandinavia got against Nintendo huh? C’mon guys pump up those numbers.

Edited 2 times

sligeach_eire

1+ y ago

Of course digital sales would be higher than physical sales. Every game is available digitally, but not every digital game is available physically, not even close. It's like comparing apples with oranges. Indie games are often available for less than €10 and digital only, whereas 1st party Nintendo games sell physically for €60.

Nintendo are on top in the hardware, and that's good to see. But their sales are down, year on year on year due to falling demand. Sony and to a lesser extent Microsoft, their sales are down because of production issues.


Re; “Every game is available digitally, but not every digital game is available physically, not even close. It's like comparing apples with oranges. Indie games are often available for less than €10 and digital only”

The article from gamesindustry.biz states “The data does not include games from indie teams.”
They’re only tracking “most major AAA publishers”, excluding Nintendo when it comes to digital.

Further down the article in relation to “the average digital/physical split” they state “We are only including games that are sold both physically and digitally in this analysis and we are only counting countries where physical and digital data is available.”