Digital Distribution Dominates Game Market in UK in 2020
The past year on the UK game market belonged to digital distribution. The best-selling title was FIFA 21, while the best-selling console was the Nintendo Switch.
- Digital sales exceed boxed,
- Best-selling game: FIFA 21,
- Best-selling console: Nintendo Switch,
- PS5 sales better than PS4.
GamesIndustry.biz, based on data from the GSD Group, published an interesting results summary from the British game market in 2020. The biggest hit of the year turned out to be FIFA 21, which found almost 2.2 million buyers. Second place went to the shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War, which distributed 1.42 million copies, which is 19% worse than the result achieved by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in the year of its release.
In total, 42.7 million copies of games were sold in the UK market last year (34% more than in 2019). From that number, 24.5 million were digital copies. This method of distribution has a growing share of the UK market. The trend has been observed for a long time, but was accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic. However, that's not to say that boxed editions have done poorly. Their sales are up 2% compared to 2019. Digital distribution is simply growing faster.
Best-selling games of 2020 in the UK market
Digital and boxed distribution combined
GamesIndustry.biz's report only included detailed sales figures for a handful of games, but Pranay has released figures for the top ten, obtaining them directly from the GDS database.
# | Game: | UK sales results: |
1 | FIFA 21 (EA) | 2.18 million |
2 | Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (Activision Blizzard) | 1.42 million |
3 | Grand Theft Auto 5 (Rockstar) | 1.12 million |
4 | FIFA 20 (EA) | 903 thousand. |
5 | Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Activision Blizzard) | 897 thousand. |
6 | Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo) | 810k. |
7 | Assassin's Creed Valhalla (Ubisoft) | 665k. |
8 | The Last of Us Part 2 (Sony) | 539 thousand. |
9 | NBA 2K20 (2K Games) | 481k. |
10 | Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege (Ubisoft) | 436 thousand. |
11 | Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar) | no data available |
12 | Mario Kart 8: Deluxe (Nintendo) | data not available |
13 | Spider-Man: Miles Morales (Sony) | data not available |
14 | Monopoly Plus (Ubisoft) | data not available |
15 | Marvel's Avengers (Square Enix) | data not available |
16 | Ghost of Tsushima (Sony) | data not available |
17 | Cyberpunk 2077 (Bandai Namco/CD Projekt) | data not available |
18 | Assassin's Creed Odyssey (Ubisoft) | data not available |
19 | Minecraft (Microsoft) | data not available |
20 | Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (EA) | no data available |
It is worth mentioning that in the case of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Mario Kart 8: Deluxe and Cyberpunk 2077 only boxed distribution was taken into account, as GDS was unable to obtain digital results for these titles. When included, the spots taken by these game would have certainly been higher.
Digital distribution only
# | Game: |
1 | FIFA 21 (EA) |
2 | Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (Activision Blizzard) |
3 | Grand Theft Auto 5 (Rockstar) |
4 | Call of Duty: Modern Warfare(Activision Blizzard) |
5 | FIFA 20 (EA) |
6 | NBA 2K20 (2K Games) |
7 | Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege (Ubisoft) |
8 | Monopoly Plus (Ubisoft) |
9 | Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar) |
10 | Assassin's Creed Valhalla (Ubisoft) |
Boxed Distribution Only
# | Game: |
1 | FIFA 21 (EA) |
2 | Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo) |
3 | Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (Activision Blizzard) |
4 | Mario Kart 8: Deluxe (Nintendo) |
5 | Assassin's Creed Valhalla (Ubisoft) |
6 | Cyberpunk 2077 (Bandai Namco/CD Projekt) |
7 | The Last of Us: Part 2 (Sony) |
8 | FIFA 20 (EA) |
9 | Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Activision Blizzard) |
10 | Grand Theft Auto 5 (Rockstar) |
Nintendo Switch as the best-selling console
Gamers bought a total of 3.16 million consoles in the UK market in 2020, 29.4% more than in 2019. The leader in terms of sales was the Nintendo Switch. Interestingly, the PlayStation 5 came in second place. Despite the recent November launch and availability issues, the PS5 found more buyers than the PS4, which took third place.
