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The Best Selling Games And Consoles Of 2021 Revealed For The UK

January 18, 2022

The best-selling games and consoles of 2021 have been revealed for the UK. Data from GSD and GfK shared by GI.biz reveals that the best-selling console in the UK for 2021 was the Nintendo Switch, which outperformed the PS5 in the final weeks of 2021 to claim the top spot.

The OLED model release and the launch of the Mario Kart 8: Deluxe bundle for Black Friday helped the Switch shoot up the charts, the report said. The PS5 finished second, with the Xbox Series X|S family coming in third. In terms of breakdown by system, 57% of units sold were Xbox Series S, compared to 43% for the Series X.

Sales of Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles were together up 14% year-over-year in 2021. Additionally, a total of 35.8 million games (combined digital and physical) and 3.36 million consoles were sold in the UK in 2021. More than 10.6 million accessories were sold in the year.

Total game sales for the UK in 2021 were down 16% compared to 2020, but the 2020 chart contained an extra week and it was a year of massive growth across the gaming industry overall due to the initial lockdowns of 2020 as a result of COVID. More people stayed home, played more games, and spent more money on games in 2020, so comparisons to that year would always be challenging. Comparing to 2019, game sales for 2021 grew by 38%.

Of the 35.8 million games sold in the UK in 2021, only 11.3 million (or 31.6%) were titles released in 2021.

FIFA 22 was the UK’s best-selling game overall in 2021, selling 10.3% better than FIFA 21 a year prior. Call of Duty: Vanguard was No. 2, but its sales slid 36.1% compared to Black Ops Cold War. (A recent report said Activision might launch Call of Duty 2022 sooner due in part to poor sales for Vanguard). Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V was No. 3 in 2021–a huge result considering the game originally launched in 2013. You can see the Top 10 sales chart below.

For the US, check out our rundown of the best-selling games and consoles of the year.