PS5 makes its mark but Nintendo Switch holds No.1 in huge November for video games | EMEAA Charts

2.35 million games consoles were sold across Europe and Australia during November 2020, the latest GSD market data has revealed.

That's a 32% increase over November 2019. In terms of revenue, games consoles - which includes the newly released PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S - generated €830 million, which is up 83.5% over last year.

Of course, the new PlayStation and Xbox machines drove that growth, but it was Nintendo Switch that held on to its position as the No.1 games console across all the markets combined. Switch console sales were actually down marginally last month compared with the year before (down 2.2%). Last November saw the release of Pokémon Sword and Shield on Switch, whereas this November there wasn't an equivalent-sized game launch.

It must be noted that the new Xbox and PlayStation consoles completely sold out across all markets, and will have sold even better if more stock had been available.

The biggest market for console sales last month was the UK, followed by France.

The data for this report is for the period November 2nd - November 29th, 2020. It covers the retail territories listed at the bottom of the article.

In terms of accessories, 3.23 million controllers, headsets, toys-to-life products and more were sold across the tracked markets, which is a very slight 1.6% drop year-on-year. The PS4 controller, the DualShock 4, was the best-selling accessory once again, beating out fresh competition from the new PS5 DualSense controller.

Digital top-up cards (Game Pass, PlayStation Wallet, eshop cards, etc...) sales are down 5.5% over last year.

In terms of the software market, across physical and digital, 25.2 million games were sold, which is up 14.7% over last November.

The digital market was the reason for that growth, with download sales growing by almost 41% over November last year. The physical market dropped slightly by 2.9% year-on-year.

Physical sales only covers selected markets (see bottom), while digital sales cover certain publishers (also see bottom). Notable absent data from the digital charts includes download sales of Nintendo and Bethesda games. Meanwhile, digital sales of PS5 launch games (Spider-Man, Demon's Souls and Sackboy) are also absent for the week they came out.

The biggest market for overall game sales in November was the UK, which was up 31.9% over last year, followed by Germany (up 23.5%) and then France (down 0.5%). In terms of just digital sales, there were European markets that posted some significant year-on-year growth figures. Italy's download market was up almost 90% over November 2019, France's digital market is up over 85%, while UK is up 78%. The digital download market has been accelerated this year due to restrictions at physical retail caused by COVID-19.

The biggest publisher of the month was Ubisoft, driven by the new releases of Watch Dogs Legion and Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Ubisoft was the No.1 digital publisher, while Nintendo was the No.1 physical publisher.

In terms of consoles, PS4 games had the biggest share of the market (digital and physical combined). Switch was the biggest in terms of pure physical sales, and it's important to note that Nintendo's digital sales are missing from the data.

PS4 digital game sales rose 40.8% year-on-year, but physical game sales are down 13.3%. Switch physical game sales are down 7.4%, and that's partially due to the absence of that big Pokemon-sized release.

Here are the EMEAA GSD charts for November:

GSD November Top 20 Video Games (Digital + Physical)

*Digital data not available

GSD November Top 10 Video Games (Digital)

GSD November Top 10 Video Games (Physical)

Digital data includes games from participating companies sold via Steam, Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Nintendo Eshop. Participating companies are Activision Blizzard, Anuman, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Codemasters, Electronic Arts, Focus Home Interactive, Koch Media, Microsoft, Milestone, Nacon, Paradox Interactive, Sega, Sony, Square Enix, Take-Two, THQ Nordic, Ubisoft and Warner Bros.

Digital data includes games sold in Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, UAE, United Kingdom.

Physical data includes all games, but only those sold in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom.

You can find out more about the GSD charts here.