The UK closes a splendid year in terms of console sales and is experiencing significant growth in digital sales.
The United Kingdom sold more than 3 million consoles during the past year 2020, of which 1.5 million corresponded only to the Nintendo Switch family of consoles. The Japanese giant, complete dominator of the market last year, marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, added almost as many units shipped to users as PS5 (450,000 units) and Xbox Series X | S (310,000 units) together; both for sale in November 2020 with severe supply problems.
The information, published by GamesIndustry under data provided by the agencies GfK and GSD, shows very positive symptoms for the hardware industry in general, since the sum of Xbox One and Xbox Series gave a total of 600,000 units sold in 2020; above the 500,000 units of 2019. In the PlayStation ecosystem, positive conclusions can also be drawn from 700,000 units in 2019 (in that course only PS4) to about 900,000 units when combining both PS4 and PS5.
The Nintendo Switch family of consoles sold 1.5 million units during 2020 in the UK; in 2019 it was close to a million.
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo improve their billing data compared to 2019
It is difficult to assess the context of these figures considering that we happened to a particularly unique year. On the one hand, the dismissal of a generation of consoles to introduce another, with what this implies in the sales of veteran machines; on the other, a global pandemic that hit the consumer electronics supply chain. In any case, it was Nintendo who took the cake with more than 1,500,000 units sold; a growth of 50% compared to a year ago, when close to one million units were sold in the United Kingdom during 2019.
The source makes clear something that can be intuited: both PS5 and Xbox Series would have sold “much more” if the market had not counted on this serious lack of stock, which also affects Spain; even Nintendo Switch, whose sales experienced a small hiatus in the spring due to a lack of units.
As far as turnover is concerned, PS5 has generated about 221 million euros at the exchange rate during 2020 in the British archipelago; while Xbox Series has done the same, contributing 137 million euros to Microsoft. Nintendo, for its part, generated in 2020 about 426 million euros with Nintendo Switch.
Finally, it should be said that 71% of the physical video games sold during 2020 were home deliveries, not direct sales in stores, while the digital market reaches an unprecedented peak.
