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Forums - Sales Discussion - UK March and Q1 Sales Info

Gamesindustry.biz article for March UK sales is up and here are the main takeaways from it:

Q1 Hardware (Jan - March 2023)
- PS5 up YoY by 180%
- PS5 sales greater than all other consoles combined
- Switch sales down over 25% YoY
- Xbox Series sales down 18% YoY

March 2023 Hardware
- PS5 #1, Switch #2, Xbox Series #3
- PS5 Sales 2% lower than February 2023
- Switch sales "very very slightly" higher than February 2023
- Xbox Series sales 10% lower than February 2023

Resident Evil 4
- Lower sales than RE2 and Village. Higher sales than RE3
- 65% PlayStation, 20% Xbox, 15% PC

Software charts

Position Title
1 Resident Evil 4 Remake (Capcom)
2 Hogwarts Legacy (Warner Bros)
3 FIFA 23 (EA)
4 WWE 2K23 (2K Games)
5 Grand Theft Auto 5 (Rockstar)
6 Tchia (Kepler)
7 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Activision Blizzard)
8 Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar)
9 Metroid Prime Remastered (Nintendo)*
10 NBA 2K23 (2K Games)

You can read the full article here: Hogwarts Legacy and PS5 rescue UK games market in Q1 2023 | UK Monthly Charts | GamesIndustry.biz



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Nothing out of the ordinary here, except declining Xbox sales.

PS5 sales up massively year over year, but early 2022 was so bad that Xbox was competitive. In other words, it's easy to have high percentage growth when you are comparing to a very low base.

Switch sales being down year over year towards the end of its sixth year is normal. March's slight uptick might be due to a value-added Mario bundle, but I have to admit that I haven't been paying attention lately. The Super Mario Bros. movie will probably have a positive effect on Switch sales in April and beyond, especially if there's a continued presence of value-added Switch SKUs. Over time that current 25% YTD decline can be mitigated to a 10-15% YTD figure.

Xbox is just weak. At the beginning of this year I expected only very slight growth, but it doesn't even manage that.



Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.

RolStoppable said:

Switch sales being down year over year towards the end of its sixth year is normal. March's slight uptick might be due to a value-added Mario bundle, but I have to admit that I haven't been paying attention lately. The Super Mario Bros. movie will probably have a positive effect on Switch sales in April and beyond, especially if there's a continued presence of value-added Switch SKUs. Over time that current 25% YTD decline can be mitigated to a 10-15% YTD figure.

12.8% of Switch sales in March were from the Mario Bundle so it helped. If I'm not mistaken the TOTK limited edition Switch launches in April which going from Amazon.com at least seems to be performing well so that should help next month.



Zippy6 said:

12.8% of Switch sales in March were from the Mario Bundle so it helped. If I'm not mistaken the TOTK limited edition Switch launches in April which going from Amazon.com at least seems to be performing well so that should help next month.

Good to know.

A Switch price cut is unrealistic this year, because keeping it at the same price despite significant inflation already differs from the norm of everything getting more expensive. But the permanent presence of value-added bundles for at least Switch Lite and the original SKU would be a sound solution to keep sales high.

Although Nintendo might wait what kind of effect the movie will have before they commit to more bundles. After all, the reason why Switch hasn't seen any price cut - aside from the small correction from €330 to €300 in a number of European countries - is that the console has always sold at a high enough level to stick with the original price and let the software do the heavy lifting.



Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.

the ps5 will certainly have a great fiscal quarter, I believe it should be between 5 and 6 million units shipped which would increase to 37 or 38 million shipped



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Welp another month, another decline in Xbox sales.



What's up with Xbox declining again? Lack of Series X supply? Or is it just the lack of big releases finally catching up?



Microsoft sure is lucky they're doing a good job of convincing the CMA cause Xbox needs a significant boost soon.



Norion said:

Microsoft sure is lucky they're doing a good job of convincing the CMA cause Xbox needs a significant boost soon.

The Acti deal is unlikely to give any meaningful "boost" in that regard, particularly as the be big games will remain multiplatform (at least for a while). Of course, they won't beat PlayStation either way, so that should be (and isn't) the end goal. They just need to ease the bleed.



                                                                                                                                                           

CGI-Quality said:
Norion said:

Microsoft sure is lucky they're doing a good job of convincing the CMA cause Xbox needs a significant boost soon.

The Acti deal is unlikely to give any meaningful "boost" in that regard, particularly as the be big games will remain multiplatform (at least for a while). Of course, they won't beat PlayStation either way, so that should be (and isn't) the end goal. They just need to ease the bleed.

I think all the additions to Game Pass and them getting control of marketing for games like COD should cause a notable boost to hardware sales. That impact will be felt far more next year than this year though so sales are probably gonna remain poor till at least Starfield.