UK Monthly Report: GTA V and Nintendo Switch Lite shine in quiet January

Grand Theft Auto V was the best-selling game in January in the UK.
Based on GSD market data, the consistently popular action game (first released in September 2013) sold more copies in January 2020 than it did in January 2019.
This is part of exclusive data supplied to GamesIndustry.biz for our new monthly market analysis of UK game sales. The data comes from ISFE and GSD, and includes software sales (physical and digital), hardware sales and accessories. To receive this data in your inbox, sign-up to our UK Retail and Publishing Newsletter.
In total, 2.13 million tracked retail and digital games were sold in the UK during January (see participating companies below), a drop of 8.3% compared with the same period the year before.
This is primarily due to a drop in physical game sales, which are down more than 21% year-on-year. January was a very quiet month for physical releases, with Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot from Bandai Namco the biggest new game launch during the month. Last year, January featured two significant releases in the form of Resident Evil 2 by Capcom (the biggest game of the month) and Nintendo's New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe.
Despite the lack of big release, download sales rose by 3.7% during January 2020. Overall, download sales accounted for 57% of tracked game sales last month.
Although GTA V was the best-selling game overall, the No.1 physical game of the month was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Check out the digital, physical and combined charts below.
The biggest publisher of January was Electronic Arts, which achieved a 15% share of game unit sales thanks to FIFA 20, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Star Wars Battlefront II and EA Sports UFC 3. However, Nintendo's first-party games are currently not included in the digital data and in terms of physical software sales alone, Nintendo was the biggest publisher of the month with a huge 21% share of the market. In terms of downloads alone, Ubisoft was narrowly the No.1 publisher, thanks to Rainbow Six: Siege, Uno and Monopoly Plus.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...-quiet-january