Black Friday video game sales dip in the UK | UK Monthly Charts

Just over three million video games were sold in the UK during November, which is a drop of 33% over the year before (GSD data).

It seems like a big fall, but there are two pretty significant caveats. First, Call of Duty launched in November last year, whereas it released in October this year, which means we don't have a major game release this time around. Second, Black Friday doesn't sit within this year's November data period, whereas it did last year. As a result, December's figures are likely to be significantly higher.

Black Friday data is available, however. And we can see that 1.53 million games were sold during Black Friday week, which is a fall of over 8% compared with Black Friday 2023.

Unfortunately, the absence of Black Friday does skew all the statistics somewhat. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is No.1 once again, followed by EA Sports FC 25. EA's football game's sales are 22% lower in November this year compared to last year. Black Friday data is missing, but if we skip ahead and look purely at that sales week, EA Sports FC's Black Friday performance in 2024 is 20% behind that it did in 2023.

The highest charting new release of the month is Dragon Age: The Veilguard at No.3. EA's title has had a slow start to life. After four weeks on sale, it is the 12th fastest-selling game of the year, ahead of Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (+1.5%), but behind the likes of Astro Bot (-9.6%), Star Wars Outlaws (-15%), Dragon's Dogma 2 (-21%) and Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero (-28%).

Another new release is Mario & Luigi: Brothership, which just misses out on the Top Ten at No.11. After three weeks on sale, it is the slowest selling of the Mario RPGs released these past 12 months, with sales 16% lower than Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (released in May) and 19% behind Super Mario RPG (released in November last year). Both of thosegames are remakes of previously popular releases.

It's worth noting we are only comparing physical sales here with the Mario titles, as Nintendo does not share digital data with the charts supplier.

Over in hardware, nearly 270,000 games consoles were sold in November, a spike of 85% over October but a big drop of 45% over the same period in 2023 (Nielsen GfK data).

The decline may appear steep, but again, this is due to the absence of Black Friday data. According to GfK, Black Friday sales were strong for consoles, with more PS5s sold this Black Friday than the previous one.

November did see the release of the new PS5 Pro console. The premium device represented 26% of all PS5 consoles sold last month.

Elsewhere, 1.05 million accessories were sold in the UK during November (Nielsen GfK data). This is 58% up over October, but down 18% over the same time last year (again, Black Friday being later this year has impacted that).

The DualSense controllers remain the top selling accessories (the White one is No.1, while the Midnight Black edition sits at No.2). A new DualSense, the 30th Anniversary Limited Edition variant, debuts at No.4.

UK GSD November 2024 Top 10 (Digital and Physical)

Position Title 1 Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Activision Blizzard) 2 EA Sports FC 25 (EA) 3 Dragon Age: The Veilguard (EA) 4 Hogwarts Legacy (Warner Bros) 5 Grand Theft Auto 5 (Rockstar) 6 Super Mario Party Jamboree (Nintendo)* 7 Horizon: Zero Dawn Remastered (Sony) 8 Nintendo Switch Sports (Nintendo)* 9 Super Mario Bros Wonder (Nintendo)* 10 Mario Kart 8: Deluxe (Nintendo)*

*Digital data unavailable

GSD digital data includes games from participating companies sold via PC digital stores, Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, Nintendo Eshop. Major participating companies are Activision Blizzard, Bandai Namco, Capcom, CD Projekt, Codemasters, Electronic Arts, Embracer Group (including Gearbox, Koch Media, Sabre Interactive), Focus Entertainment, Kepler, Konami, Marvellous Games, Microids, Microsoft (including Bethesda), Milestone, Nacon, Paradox Interactive, Quantic Dream, Sega, Sony, Square Enix, Take-Two, Tencent, Ubisoft and Warner Bros. Nintendo and 505 Games are the notable absentees, alongside smaller studios.