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UK sales October 2023 - PS5#1 (-4%) XBS#2 (-33%) NSW#3 (+15%) | EA FC 24#1 Spider-Man#2 AC Mirage#3

Thick Thighs Save Lives

NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire


Due to a technical situation at the charts company, we are using GfK data for physical game sales this month.

1.6 million digital games were sold in the UK during October (GSD data), a drop of 24% over the year before.

Meanwhile, GfK data shows that physical game sales are up slighty (+8%) to 1.08 million games sold.

The main reason for the overall drop is the fact that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 launched in October last year, whereas this year's Call of Duty landed in November.
There was also a drop in sales for this year's football game. EA Sports FC 24's first week sales, looking at GfK and GSD numbers together, are 16% lower than last year's FIFA 23. 2022's FIFA game was the last one by EA, and also tied into the World Cup that took place in December, which led to a strong opening month for the game.

The best-selling new game of the month was Spider-Man 2 from Sony. By combining GfK and GSD sales together, we can see that the first two weeks are nearly 9% lower than 2018's original Spider-Man, but 94% bigger than 2020's Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
Compared with last year's big PlayStation game, God of War Ragnarok, the first two weeks of sales are 2% higher for Spider-Man 2. Note: God of War Ragnarok was available on PS4 and PS5, whereas Spider-Man 2 is purely a PS5 game.

Next on the new game list is Assassin's Creed Mirage, which was the third biggest digital game of the month and the fourth biggest physical release. The game's sales are 58% lower than the opening four weeks for Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which released in 2020. However, this was always billed as a smaller Assassin's Creed, with gameplay similar to older titles in the series. The first four weeks of sales for Mirage are almost identical to the first four weeks of 2018's Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
Elsewhere, Super Mario Bros Wonder is the third biggest physical game of the month, but isn't in the digital charts as Nintendo does not share download figures with the charts company.

In terms of boxed sales alone, Super Mario Bros Wonder is the biggest Mario launch on Nintendo Switch, with 3,000 more sales after two weeks than 2017's Super Mario Odyssey and 13,000 more than 2020's Super Mario 3D All-Stars. With digital, it is very likely this is the biggest Mario launch in UK history. Nintendo has already announced it is Europe's biggest Super Mario game launch.
Also new in the charts for October is EA Sports UFC 5, which is at No.4 in the digital charts but No.33 in physical. Lords of the Fallen is at No.5 in digital and No.17 in physical. Sonic Superstars is at No.26 in digital and No.9 in physical, and the game sold significantly better in a box than it did as a download.

Just missing out on the Top Ten is Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Volume 1, which makes No.11 in digital and No.15 in physical.

Finally, Red Dead Redemption makes the physical charts at No.10 due to the arrival of the boxed version for Nintendo Switch and PS4. The game was released on these platforms digitally back in August.
PS5 and Xbox console sales dip in October

There was a slight drop in console hardware sales in the UK, according to GfK figures. Sales dropped 10% month-on-month to 176,022 devices sold (panel data).

There was a slight dip of 4% in sales of PS5, although it was still a very strong month for Sony's console. 56% of PS5s sold in October were for the official EA Sports FC 24 hardware bundle. The Spider-Man 2 edition of the console accounted for 6% of sales.
The big decline was for Xbox Series S and X, which suffered a sales drop of 33%. The console had a strong September due to the release of a new Xbox Series S model and the hit game Starfield, which explains the month-on-month decline.

Microsoft's platforms still narrowly manages to stay ahead of Nintendo Switch, which is once again in third spot. However, Nintendo Switch sales did rise 15% over the month before, helped by the launch of Super Mario Bros Wonder. However, the new Mario red OLED version of the console was only 6.2% of Switch sales last month.
As we revealed last week, PS5 has had a 51% market over the last six months due to strong sales activity over the summer. Xbox has seen its market share drop to 23%, while Nintendo Switch has fallen heavily to 25%. GfK boss Dorian Bloch says there is a lot to play for over the final three months of the year, which tends to account for over half of all console sales during a calendar year.
In terms of accessories, 583,869 add-on products were sold in October according to GfK panel data.

That's a drop of 12% on September and 15% down on October last year.

It's an unchanged Top Five, with the white DualSense at No.1, the Carbon Black Xbox Wireless Controller at No.2 and the Midnight Black DualSense at No.3. Xbox's Robot White (No.4) and Pulse Red (No.5) Wireless Controller complete the Top Five.

UK GSD October 2023 Top 10 (Digital Only)​

PositionTitle
1EA Sports FC 24 (EA)
2Spider-Man 2 (Sony)
3Assassin's Creed Mirage (Ubisoft)
4EA Sports FC 5 (EA)
5Lords of the Fallen (CI Games)
6Grand Theft Auto 5 (Rockstar)
7Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar)
8Riders Republic (Ubisoft)
9Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege (Ubisoft)
10Hogwarts Legacy (Ubisoft)

UK GfK October 2023 Top 10 (Physical Only)​

PositionTitle
1EA Sports FC 24 (EA)
2Spider-Man 2 (Sony)
3Super Mario Bros Wonder (Nintendo)
4Assassin's Creed Mirage (Ubisoft)
5Mario Kart 8: Deluxe (Nintendo)
6Hogwarts Legacy (Warner Bros)
7Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (EA)
8Minecraft: Switch Edition (Mojang/Nintendo)
9Sonic Superstars (Sega)
10Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar)

 

Bernoulli

M2 slut
How is GTA and RDR 2 still charting
Kevin James Pain GIF by TV Land
 











UK GSD October 2023 Top 10 (Digital Only)​

PositionTitle
1EA Sports FC 24 (EA)
2Spider-Man 2 (Sony)
3Assassin's Creed Mirage (Ubisoft)
4EA Sports FC 5 (EA)
5Lords of the Fallen (CI Games)
6Grand Theft Auto 5 (Rockstar)
7Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar)
8Riders Republic (Ubisoft)
9Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege (Ubisoft)
10Hogwarts Legacy (Ubisoft)

UK GfK October 2023 Top 10 (Physical Only)​

PositionTitle
1EA Sports FC 24 (EA)
2Spider-Man 2 (Sony)
3Super Mario Bros Wonder (Nintendo)
4Assassin's Creed Mirage (Ubisoft)
5Mario Kart 8: Deluxe (Nintendo)
6Hogwarts Legacy (Warner Bros)
7Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (EA)
8Minecraft: Switch Edition (Mojang/Nintendo)
9Sonic Superstars (Sega)
10Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar)


Again what's up with his biased perspective here? Since when Month on Month comparison is meaningful ? What about year on year? Often PR firms use month on month results to spin something.
 
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yazenov

Member
Why no software splits for EA FC 24 and Assasins Creed Mirage? I'm sure he will give us the splits for COD but not other games when it's convenient.

Yikes at the XBS (-40%) YoY :messenger_astonished:
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
Again what's up with his biased perspective here? Since when Month on Month comparison is meaningful ? What about year on year? Often PR firms use month on month results to spin something.

Chris these days either spins positive for Xbox or when he can't he spins negative for PS5. Why? No clue.

Matt(NPD) has done the same on multiple occasions. There seems to be a bought into fear behind the scenes that Xbox going down is bad for everybody. Bad for the industry, bad for us, etc. Have to wonder where that comes from? Like Matt for example he said it was great for the industry that MS was buying devs and publishers left and right, specially ABK. Why would this be great for anyone other than MS???
 

HeWhoWalks

Gold Member
Man, Starfield hasn't had close to the impact I expected. Guess it was stupid to expect one game to turn things around, even just slightly.
It fell short of any real impact. It's not even the "one game" sort of impact. It did virtually nothing. And this is what my argument was when the Circana numbers first came out for it. There were some here who beat their chests like it did so good. In reality, it was a tumbleweed, not moving any needles at all. But then, it was a Game Pass game and PlayStation was eliminated, so the writing was on the wall for anyone who wasn't glued to green goggles.
 
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kaizenkko

Member
Chris these days either spins positive for Xbox or when he can't he spins negative for PS5. Why? No clue.

Matt(NPD) has done the same on multiple occasions. There seems to be a bought into fear behind the scenes that Xbox going down is bad for everybody. Bad for the industry, bad for us, etc. Have to wonder where that comes from? Like Matt for example he said it was great for the industry that MS was buying devs and publishers left and right, specially ABK. Why would this be great for anyone other than MS???
Well, it's not something good for consumers one competitor being so strong and the only other so weak. That's the case of Playstation/Xbox. In fact, many of the problems with Sony these days happens becauses they don't give a f*ck, and they keep acting like that because there's no competitor who can threaten their reign.
 
Chris these days either spins positive for Xbox or when he can't he spins negative for PS5. Why? No clue.

Matt(NPD) has done the same on multiple occasions. There seems to be a bought into fear behind the scenes that Xbox going down is bad for everybody. Bad for the industry, bad for us, etc. Have to wonder where that comes from? Like Matt for example he said it was great for the industry that MS was buying devs and publishers left and right, specially ABK. Why would this be great for anyone other than MS???
We take the data scraps for free, but who do you think is paying for the early release full detail data from these companies? Game publishers and hardware makers. Who has the deepest pockets of all companies to pay for this stuff? Microsoft. Who doesn't need to buy as much from them if they aren't making hardware? Microsoft.
 

Three

Member
We take the data scraps for free, but who do you think is paying for the early release full detail data from these companies? Game publishers and hardware makers. Who has the deepest pockets of all companies to pay for this stuff? Microsoft. Who doesn't need to buy as much from them if they aren't making hardware? Microsoft.
Seems a little farfetched but with Circana's sudden shift to tracking engagement and dropping platform charts I wouldn't be surprised either.
 
United Kingdom 2023
PS5 - 98K
XBS-36K
PS5 (58%) YoY
XBS (-40%) YoY

Having this information because the information that Chris gives is from one month to the next when it has always been done from year to year to compare? It would be ridiculous to compare December with January for example.
And why are sales percentages no longer shared between multis like before when before they were?
All very "strange".
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
Well, it's not something good for consumers one competitor being so strong and the only other so weak. That's the case of Playstation/Xbox. In fact, many of the problems with Sony these days happens becauses they don't give a f*ck, and they keep acting like that because there's no competitor who can threaten their reign.

MS argued it’s not PlayStation/Xbox. There’s Nintendo, there’s Steam, there’s streaming like GFN.

And you’re wrong. Sony do what they do because they can’t have a business that runs on losses and spends billions on loss leaders, and spends 100B buying IP.

Nintendo also runs their business like they need to make money.

Also consumers vote with their wallet, what we don’t need is a player trying to destroy the whole economic model just to suit their interests fuck everyone else style. And all they are doing is buying revenue and engagement metrics, they aren’t actually competing anyway.
 
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Seems a little farfetched but with Circana's sudden shift to tracking engagement and dropping platform charts I wouldn't be surprised either.
To be clear, I'm suggesting that literally any game company going out of business would be detrimental to GfK or Circana's business, so they have a vested interest for any of them to succeed. Microsoft just happens to be the richest. We already have seen where they have changed their reporting at the request of Microsoft in the past. These tracking companies don't exist as a charity, they are businesses that get paid by the companies they track. That's not to say that they will make up data, but they will present the data however they are paid to present it. If a company paid them to report the number of games starting with the letter Q sold on Tuesdays that are an even date, then we would be getting charts about that every month.

It is sort of like the Nielsen TV ratings in the past, they measured the ratings independently, but the fact is they got paid by the very companies they were measuring. That's why they needed audits and certifications by truly independent bodies to say that they are impartial, but the fact still remains they had a vested interest in what they were measuring being successful.
 

yazenov

Member
United Kingdom 2023
PS5 - 98K
XBS-36K
PS5 (58%) YoY
XBS (-40%) YoY

Having this information because the information that Chris gives is from one month to the next when it has always been done from year to year to compare? It would be ridiculous to compare December with January for example.
And why are sales percentages no longer shared between multis like before when before they were?
All very "strange".

Because it will look bad for MS. You don't want your biggest contributor to look like a failure.

Chris will give us the Call of Duty splits because FPS is the only genre that the Xbox consumers resonate with and will look somewhat competitive. The other games will be laughably bad for Xbox and we can't have that.

Its the same with the MoM instead of YoY hardware comparisons.
 

demigod

Member
United Kingdom 2023
PS5 - 98K
XBS-36K
PS5 (58%) YoY
XBS (-40%) YoY

Having this information because the information that Chris gives is from one month to the next when it has always been done from year to year to compare? It would be ridiculous to compare December with January for example.
And why are sales percentages no longer shared between multis like before when before they were?
All very "strange".
Is there proof that they used to do YoY? Can’t find it.
 

Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
That Chris is still calling Starfield a "hit game" tells you everything you need to know about his bias and analysis. .

Starfield is a flop and we should accurately call it out as such. Microsoft foreclosed and forwent tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars to make it an exclusive in hopes of boosting Xbox hardware sales and GamePass numbers, and it has failed to do so. They put millions of dollars into advertising. The game was in development for over 8 years.

It's not a hit.

Imagine someone saying Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was a hit. 10th highest-grossing movie of the year domestically, but the context matters.
 

Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
A lot of people go watch every movie nominated for an Academy Award.

In order to play every game nominated for game of the year, how many consoles would I need to own, and which consoles?

The answer is obviously 2 and PS5 and Switch.

I would not need an XBS and owning an XBS would not allow me to play Spider-Man 2. So his effort to discount the importance of exclusives is jarring as it is console warring.

He can't be trusted for any sound analysis, he's simply a gatekeeper for the data, which he will go out of his way to skew.

I encourage no one to take him seriously outside of raw numbers and even then with the appropriate context.

Microsoft has made its own bed, we don't need to lie to people to prop them up in the industry. If/when Microsoft withdraws from the industry, someone else will step in to compete with Sony. Whether it be Nintendo, Tencent, Amazon, Netflix, Google, or Apple, who knows, but we don't need to prop companies or their plastic boxes up with lies and propaganda.
 

Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
Is this dude fucking serious mentioning multiplat games? Oh he is.

It started ever since his hit piece on xbox sometime during Summer.

But if the deal doesn't go through – and this is where we are right now – what does Xbox do? Because it's not been a vintage generation for Xbox so far. This year, as PS5 stock comes flooding into stores and sales are spiking, the Xbox Series platforms are heading in the opposite direction. We haven't had a Game Pass subscriber update in a long time, but analysts have pointed to slowing growth in subscriptions. And as for the games… well we haven't had a major Xbox exclusive for a while. - Christopher Dring

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/without-activision-what-does-xbox-do-now-opinion

So exclusives mattered in April, but they don't matter now?
 

Elios83

Member
Is this dude fucking serious mentioning multiplat games? Oh he is.

It started ever since his hit piece on xbox sometime during Summer.
He made a very critical editorial about the Activision acquisition where he was really aggressive against Microsoft.
He was forced to edit it and was not able to cover the topic anymore.

He was definetly "recommended" by his superiors to change his tune about Microsoft or he would risk the job.
He's taking the task a bit too seriously now, his spins to try to cover how poor Xbox is performing are super obvious.
 

Crayon

Member
Well, it's not something good for consumers one competitor being so strong and the only other so weak. That's the case of Playstation/Xbox. In fact, many of the problems with Sony these days happens becauses they don't give a f*ck, and they keep acting like that because there's no competitor who can threaten their reign.

No way. MS is willing and able to fuck shit up to get their way. "Spend sony out of business." Nintendo not "on their own hardware". Buying Valve (which would be the biggest disaster of them all) .That's called anti-competitive and it's not good for you, me, or anyone. If they drop console, sorry for the ponies, but they will find not a ton changes. People think that MS won't leave the console business after spending 100 billion but the truth is if they back out, they will still own and buy shit. They will still withold their game from PS because that's still a 100 million people that "should" see the light and use gamepass, xcloud, and windows store.

Let the real competitors compete. Valve, Sony, Nintendo. The ones that actually make money with good products to survive. The ones who don't have the means (der... sony would do it. Yeah but they never will be able to so miss me with that shit. Sorry, not you personally, kaizenkko.) to "spend [competition] out of business". (Anyone who thinks that's a "thought experimen" btw can shove it up your dad's stupid ass.)
 

Porticus

Banned
He made a very critical editorial about the Activision acquisition where he was really aggressive against Microsoft.
He was forced to edit it and was not able to cover the topic anymore.

He was definetly "recommended" by his superiors to change his tune about Microsoft or he would risk the job.
He's taking the task a bit too seriously now, his spins to try to cover how poor Xbox is performing are super obvious.

Is scary that MS has so much power against a mere journalist, not only he needs to shut up but even licking their boots now.
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
That Chris is still calling Starfield a "hit game" tells you everything you need to know about his bias and analysis. .

Starfield is a flop and we should accurately call it out as such. Microsoft foreclosed and forwent tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars to make it an exclusive in hopes of boosting Xbox hardware sales and GamePass numbers, and it has failed to do so. They put millions of dollars into advertising. The game was in development for over 8 years.

It's not a hit.

Imagine someone saying Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was a hit. 10th highest-grossing movie of the year domestically, but the context matters.

All told between SW losses across Xbox, PS5, PC, we’re looking at around close to billy lost lifetime imo. But that’s only if Starfield was the most important rpg of all time, real Starfield didn’t lose that much money. No way this would’ve sold ten million on PS5.
 
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Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
All told between SW losses across Xbox, PS5, PC, we’re looking at around close to billy lost lifetime imo. But that’s only if Starfield was the most important rpg of all time, real Starfield didn’t lose that much money. No way this would’ve sold ten million on PS5.

I mean let's look at the reality of it.

If Starfield didn't need to support Xbox this year, maybe it gets delayed for another year, but let's ignore that factor for a second.

If it wasn't on GamePass AND it released on PS5, it probably would have sold significantly higher because there was no rental period ahead of the rest of the reviews coming out.

The lost revenue is due to GamePass and the foreclosure on PS5... basically the core philosophy of Microsoft's purchase of Zenimax...
 
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