Top 25 best-selling video games in the UK in 2021

During the year 2021, 35.8 million digital and physical games, as well as 3.36 million consoles, were sold in the UK alone alongside the 10.6 million accessories according to the data from GSD and GfK.

Based on the data, consoles including Xbox machines, various Nintendo consoles, as well as PlayStation consoles sales have seen a 14% overall increase in sales compared to the year before.

Nintendo Switch finished the year as the best-selling console in the UK, managing to overtake the top spot from PlayStation 5 within the last couple of weeks of the tear. A total of more than half a million Nintendo Switch consoles have been sold over the course of November and December. This was likely contributed to by the Mario Kart 8: Deluxe bundle that conveniently launched around the same time as Black Friday, as well as the brand new version of the Switch console that originally launched in October and featured an OLED screen.

This has marked the second-best year for the Switch, second only to 2020 when the console’s popularity skyrocketed due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Xbox came in third with 43% of all Xbox consoles sales consisting of the two current generation consoles, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. While the Xbox Series X sold only 24% of the Xbox machines between July and September, it managed to come on top outselling the Series S in the final three months of the year.

While console sales saw an increase, software saw a decline based on the data from GSD. During 2021. 35.8 million games were sold which is a 16% decline compared to 2020. It is worth noting again that 2020 was marked by the Covid 19 outbreak which resulted in increased demand. If we compare the 2021 data to the one from 2019, software saw an increase in sales by 38%.

20.5 million games released in 2021 were downloaded while 15.3 million were physical sales which marks a decline of 18% of the prior and a decline of 12.6% of the latter compared to 2020.

When it comes to titles released in 2021, 11.3 million games were sold during the year which is 31.6% of all games sold in 2021.

The biggest publisher of 2021 was EA with FIFA 22 taking the top spot. Call of Duty: Vanguard came in second with its sales seeing a decline of 36.1% compared to the previous year’s installment Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.

Third place on the list was taken by GTA 5, a title that saw a 23% decline in sales, however, it is worth noting that the game still remains popular enough to be at the top of bestsellers, almost ten years after its release. Another Rockstar title that appeared on the charts was Red Dead Redemption 2, coming in at number six with its sales decreasing 5% compared to 2020.

F1 2021 made an unexpected appearance on the list, outselling Far Cry 6 due to the dramatic events of the F1 racing season likely impacting the sales resulting in a large number of sales in December 2021.

Lastly, it is worth noting that the latest installments of Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Pokemon Shining Pearl didn’t make it on the list due to them being considered separate products, however, if their sales were counted as a single game, Pokemon would have appeared on the list in tenth place.