UK 2020 Sales Report - Hardware and Software

[Xevross]

43 million games sold in the UK in 2020 | UK Annual Report | GamesIndustry.biz

Source is here, a lot of info. Firstly Hardware:

Now onto the sales of the consoles themselves. Across all devices, including handhelds, 3.16 million games machines were sold in 2020. That's a big rise of 29.4% over 2019.

The winner of the year was Nintendo Switch, which was the best-selling games console in the UK for 11 of the 12 months in 2020. Switch sales are up 52.2% last year compared with 2019, which offset the 35.3% drop for PS4 and the 42.3% drop for Xbox One.
The second best-selling console of 2020 was the PlayStation 5, despite only being on sale since mid-November (and with Sony struggling to supply the demand). The PS5 very narrowly outsold the PS4, which is in third position.

This means sales look like this:

Switch 1.45M (3.94M LTD)
PS5 ~430k (430k LTD)
PS4 420k (7.55M LTD)
XBS ~300k (300k LTD)
XB1 300k (5.70M LTD)

~260k systems remaining across all others. That Switch number compares to a peak year of 1.26M for PS4 and 1.07M for XB1. PS5's 430k is quite far down on PS4's 580k debut in 2013. XB1 did 400k in 2013, XBS 300k estimate is from Chris Dring's info of Switch~=PS5+PS4+XB1+XBS, so it could be a bit off but safe to say XBS is down on XB1.

Software top 10 including digital except Nintendo titles:

01. FIFA 21 - 2.182.694 units
02. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War - 1.420.353
03. Grand Theft Auto V - 1.127.222
04. FIFA 20 - 903.810
05. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - 897,350
06. Animal Crossing: New Horizons* - 810.462
07. Assassin's Creed Valhalla - 665.815
08. The Last of Us: Part II -  539,247
09. NBA 2K20 - 481.507
10. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege - 436.957

And some highlights:

The [digital] transition is certainly increasing. Two thirds -- 67% -- of games sold in the UK last year were bought via Xbox Live, PSN, Nintendo Eshop and Steam. That's a big jump on 2019, when 52% of games sold were via download stores. The market was transitioning towards digital before 2020.

The most successful boxed games publisher was Nintendo, which accounted for 20.5% of all physical games sold in 2020 (EA is in second place with 12.4%). The biggest digital games publisher of the year was Ubisoft, with an 18% market share (again, followed by EA with 15%). If we combine physical and digital together, Ubisoft was No.1 with a 14.3% market share, followed closely by EA (13.7%). However, as already stated, Nintendo digital sales are not included.

In terms of games sales by consoles, PS4 was the top-performing platform, with 39.6% of games being bought on Sony's last-generation device. Of course, the absence of Nintendo games from the digital data does skew the overall figure. In terms of purely retail sales, PS4 was still No.1 with a 37.4% market share, but Nintendo Switch was close behind with 35.1%.

If we purely look at digital sales, PS4 had a 41% market share, ahead of Xbox One's 26%. This is just for full game download sales, so Xbox Game Pass isn't included in this.