Sales Slump for Video Games on Shadowy Friday in the UK: Monthly Chart Insights
Reports indicate that over three million video games were sold in the UK during November, reflecting a 33% decline compared to the previous year (GSD data).
While this appears to be a significant decrease, there are two important considerations. Firstly, Call of Duty was released in November last year, whereas it debuted in October this year, meaning we do not have a major game launch for this period. Secondly, Black Friday did not fall within this year’s November reporting period, while it did in the previous year. Consequently, December’s numbers are expected to be considerably higher.
Black Friday statistics are available, and we observe that 1.53 million games were sold during Black Friday week, marking an over 8% decline compared to Black Friday 2023.
Unfortunately, the lack of Black Friday data skews the overall statistics quite significantly. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is once again in the top spot, followed by EA Sports FC 25. EA’s soccer title saw a sales drop of 22% in November this year compared to the previous year. Although Black Friday figures are missing, if we advance and examine just that sales week, EA Sports FC’s performance during Black Friday in 2024 is down 20% from 2023.
The leading new release of the month is Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which comes in at No.3. EA’s title has had a slow start. After four weeks on the market, it ranks as the 12th fastest-selling game of the year, slightly ahead of Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (+1.5%), but lagging behind titles such as Astro Bot (-9.6%), Star Wars Outlaws (-15%), Dragon’s Dogma 2 (-21%), and Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero (-28%).
Another new launch is Mario & Luigi: Brothership, which narrowly misses the Top Ten at No.11. After three weeks of availability, it ranks as the slowest-selling of the Mario RPGs released in the past twelve months, with sales 16% lower than Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (released in May) and 19% below Super Mario RPG (released in November last year). Both of these titles are remakes of previously successful games.
It’s important to note that we are only comparing physical sales for the Mario titles, as Nintendo does not share digital data with the charts provider.
In terms of hardware, nearly 270,000 gaming consoles were sold in November, showing an 85% increase over October but a significant 45% decrease compared to the same period in 2023 (Nielsen GfK data).
While the decline may seem steep, it is once again attributed to the absence of Black Friday data. According to GfK, Black Friday sales were favorable for consoles, with more PS5s sold this Black Friday than the last.
November also marked the launch of the new PS5 Pro.