Top 20 best-selling video games in Italy in 2020

The Italian games industry, like many, saw a huge year for spending in 2020 due to people turning to indoor entertainment in the pandemic. Total spending reached more than €2 billion.

The latest report from IIDEA, a trade body that compiles sales and revenue data from multiple relevant sources, showed total spending of €2.18 billion in Italy for the year. This figure is up by 21.9 percent year-on-year from €1.79 billion in 2019.

Software made up the biggest chunk of this spending. 82 percent, €1.78 billion, is attributed to software, which is up by 24.8 percent year-on-year. Digital games were the largest individual contributor. €799 million was generated over the year, up by 32.7 percent year-on-year. Boxed games, on the other hand, dipped by 6 percent year-on-year, generating €284 million.

Mobile saw the most growth for the year. The segment is up by 33.5 percent at €701 million.

As should be expected, hardware sales rose by 10.3 percent year-on-year, bringing in €395 million. Of that, a whopping €275 million was spent on consoles and €120 million on hybrid toys such as Amiibo.

884,100 consoles were sold over the year. This is down from 950,800 the year before, but this could be down to the launch of two brand new consoles in 2020.

The report shows that next-gen console sales saw 518,856 units sold. This number includes the Nintendo Switch, so it’s hard to tell exactly how many PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles were sold in Italy last year.

Despite a lot of growth, the number of Italian gamers actually shrank over the year. The report indicates that 16.7 million gamers were registered in 2020, which is down from 17 million in 2019. Comparatively, for the age range, six to sixty-four, the percentage of people playing games has only changed by one percent though, 28 percent compared to 39 percent in 2019.

Play time data seems to suggest that the Xbox Series X/S sold better than the PS5. However, this is highly unreliable, since there could be any number of reasons for shorter sessions on any given console.

The top twenty best-selling games in the region for 2020 were as follows.