European hardware/software sales for 2022 revealed

Earlier in the week, we got a look at how well Nintendo did in the UK for 2022. Today gives us a much bigger picture, thanks to data for all of Europe. Not surprisingly, the Switch and its games came out on top pretty much everywhere.

First up, let’s take a look at the top 20 games across Europe for 2022. Keep in mind this list combines digital and physical sales, but Nintendo doesn’t report digital numbers for their software.

After that, we have the top 10 physical game sales in Europe.

Finally, we have the top 10 digital game sales across Europe in 2022.

As usual, we also have a more specific breakdown on game sales, along with data on hardware sales in general. You can find those bullet points below.

• new game sales increased year-on-year by 16%
• Switch sales were down year-on-year
• 159 million console and PC games were sold across tracked European markets in 2022
• game sales dropped 7.1% over the year before
• 82.5 million games were sold via digital downloads
• 76.6 million games were sold via physical retailers
• If Pokémon Scarlet and Violet sales were combined, the game would be #6
• Pokémon Scarlet/Violet’s sales were 13% bigger year-on-year than Diamond/Pearl
• Pokémon Scarlet/Violet were 8% bigger than Pokémon Sword/Shield
• UK was the No.1 games market across Europe (game sales down 6% year-on-year)
• Germany was the No.2 games market across Europe (game sales down 13%)
• France was the No.3 games market across Europe (game sales down 3%)
• Germany and France were the strongest markets for Nintendo Switch titles
• for tracked territories, 5.3 million consoles were sold last year, a drop of 25%
• Switch was comfortably the No.1 console, despite sales falling by 15% year-over-year
• Switch was No.1 in almost every country, minus Denmark, Sweden, & Norway
• with peripherals (including toys-to-life), sales were down 10% to 18 million
• Switch Joy-Con were the No.3 best-selling peripheral (sales down 23.7%)