PS5 soars 200% as console sales rise throughout Europe

Video game and console sales throughout Europe rose year-on-year in August.

According to GSD (via GamesIndustry.biz), around 10.7 million games from triple-A publishers were sold in Europe last month.

This is a rise of nearly 29% over August 2022, and that’s without taking the popular Baldur’s Gate 3 into account (because GSD doesn’t receive sales figures from publisher Larian).

Console sales also jumped last month, with hardware sales up 67% in Europe compared to August 2022.

This is mainly due to the PS5, which was still suffering from stock shortages last year but is now in plentiful supply and has recently seen a number of price promotions. Compared to August 2022, PS5 hardware sales jumped 197% in August 2023.

With Baldur’s Gate 3 not being counted, the best selling game in Europe last month was FIFA 23, followed by Grand Theft Auto 5. The latter saw sales jump 40% compared to last August.

In terms of single-platform releases, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom sold more than anything else, followed by Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

Further reading

Baldur’s Gate 3’s next major patch and full Mac support are coming next week

The Mac version was originally expected to leave Early Access earlier this month

The best-selling new release (again, not counting Baldur’s Gate 3) was Armored Core 6, which was the fourth-best selling game in Europe last month. It sold particularly well in the UK, GSD says.

Baldur’s Gate 3 was released on August 3 to universal critical acclaim, and currently has a Metacritic rating of 96.

On August 13, 10 days after its release, it registered a peak concurrent player count of 875,343, the second-highest peak of any 2023 release just behind Hogwarts Legacy.