UK Monthly Report: GTA V reigns again as The Division 2 bounces back in February Software market drops more than 15% and console sales continue to tumble

Christopher Dring Head of Games B2B Friday 13th March 2020 Share this article Share

Companies in this article Interactive Software Federation of Europe

It was another very quiet month for UK games sales last month, according to the latest digital and physical market data from GSD.

Grand Theft Auto 5 was the best-selling game of the month, and the Rockstar game has sold more in its first two months this year than it did during the same period in 2019.

Overall, 1.7 million games were sold last month, which is a drop of 15.4% year-on-year. Last year's February was significantly busier, with the likes of Anthem, Kingdom Hearts III, Resident Evil 2 and Far Cry New Dawn doing the bulk of the business. This year's only new release in the charts is PS4 exclusive Dreams, which reached No.6.

Just short of 900,000 games were sold digitally, with the rest coming physical. The physical data includes every game sold in a box, whereas the digital data only includes games from 15 major publishers (you can see the full list below). If we just analyse the data with those 15 publishers (physical and digital) we can see that 65.5% of game sales came via Steam, PSN, Xbox Live and Nintendo eShop.

A big digital seller in February was Ubisoft's The Division 2. The game was boosted by price activity and extra promotion ahead of the launch of a new expansion pack, which is billed as a significant new push for the 2019 title.

Most games were sold on PS4 last month, with the console enjoying a 40.8% market share. This was followed by Xbox One with a 25.7% share. Note: Nintendo does not share sales of first-party digital games.

As a result of The Division 2 and strong sales of Rainbow Six Siege, Ubisoft was the top publisher of the month with a 17.5% share of all game sales. If we just count physical sales, Nintendo is No.1 with a 19.6% share (again, digital sales of Nintendo games are not included)

Over in console hardware, and sales have taken a far steeper drop of 37% in February compared with the same period the year before. Just over 71,000 games machines were sold in the UK during the month.

Nintendo Switch was comfortably the best-selling console, although sales are flat year-on-year. The Neon version of the console was the single best-selling version.

PS4 and Xbox One console sales suffered the biggest drops ahead of the launch of PS5 and Xbox Series X this year.

Finally, more than 926,000 accessories, points cards and toys-to-life products were sold in the UK last month, generating a combined revenue of £24.3 million.

That's a drop of 20% in units compared to the same period a year before, and 14% in revenue.

The most successful points card is the Xbox Live £10 gift card. The best-selling accessory was the Camo Green DualShock 4 controller for PS4. And the most successful toys-to-life product - for the second month running - was the Dark Samus Amiibo.

Now for the GSD charts for the four weeks ending Saturday, February 22.

February UK Physical & Download Top 20 (Full Games)

Position Title 1 Grand Theft Auto 5 2 FIFA 20 3 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Tom Clancy's The Division 2 5 Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege 6 Dreams 7 Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 8 NBA 2K20 9 Uno 10 Red Dead Redemption 2 11 Monopoly Plus 12 Mario Kart 8: Deluxe* 13 Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition 14 Spyro Reignited Trilogy 15 Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy 16 Minecraft 17 Just Dance 2020 18 Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot 19 Star Wars Battlefront 2 20 Need for Speed Heat

* Digital data not available.

February UK Physical Top 20 (Full Games)

Position Title 1 FIFA 20 2 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Grand Theft Auto 5 4 Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 5 Mario Kart 8: Deluxe 6 Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition 7 Ring Fit Adventure 8 Just Dance 2020 9 Luigi's Mansion 3 10 NBA 2K20 11 Minecraft 12 Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games: Tokyo 2020 13 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 14 Pokémon Sword 15 Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy 16 Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot 17 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 18 Need for Speed: Heat 19 WWE 2K20 20 Tom Clancy's The Division 2

February UK Download Top 20 (Full Games)

Position Title 1 Grand Theft Auto 5 2 Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege 3 Tom Clancy's The Division 2 4 FIFA 20 5 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 6 Uno 7 Dreams 8 Monopoly Plus 9 Star Wars Battlefront 2 10 NBA 2K20 11 Red Dead Redemption 2 12 EA Sports UFC 13 Spyro Reignited Trilogy 14 South Park: The Fractured But Whole 15 Metro Exodus 16 Assassin's Creed Odyssey 17 Spider-Man 18 Mortal Kombat 11 19 Hitman 2 20 Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

Digital data includes full games sold via Steam, Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Nintendo Eshop. Participating companies are Activision Blizzard, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Codemasters, Electronic Arts, Focus Home Interactive, Koch Media, Microsoft, Milestone, Paradox Interactive, Sega, Sony, Square Enix, Take-Two, Ubisoft and Warner Bros. Physical sales data is supplied directly by the retailers.

The data covers the month from Sunday, January 26, 2020 - Saturday, February 22, 2020.

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