Switch, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom take #1 spots in Europe's game industry sales for May 2023

Just like the rest of the world, the combo of the Switch and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom made for an irresistible pairing for thousands of gamers throughout Europe in the month of May.

The breakdown of hardware and software sales across Europe for May 2023 have been revealed, and Nintendo has once again stolen the show. Let’s start off with a look at the top 20 software across Europe in May 2023.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom shot straight to the #1 position for the month, surprising pretty much no one. The real impressive part is that while this chart shows combined digital/physical sales, Nintendo doesn’t report the digital side of things, so Zelda managed to secure the top spot on physical sales alone.

Along with the software side of things, we also have some details on hardware sales. While we don’t have the concrete figures, we do know that Switch was the #1 hardware across Europe for May 2023, with sales up over 39% compared with May last year. PS5 took second place overall, with sales up 81% compared with May 2022. Finally, Xbox took third with sales 16% down compared to May last year.

Finally, we have some various stats about game industry sales across Europe for May 2023, which you can read below.

• nearly 10.6 million digital and physical games were sold across Europe last month
• Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom sold more than 2.5x the second placed game: Hogwarts Legacy
• Zelda is already the third best-selling game of the year across Europe
• looking at purely physical retail sales, Zelda is already the No.1 game of the year in Europe
• 1.3 million accessories were sold across Europe last month, up 30% from 2022
• the Switch Pro Controller was the #2 accessory, as it jumped 530% in sales
• the Tears of the Kingdom amiibo was the fifth best-selling accessory of the month
• the Switch OLED Carry Case debuted at No.10
• 1.35 million points cards/wallets were sold, up 2.7% over May 2022