It should come as no surprise to anyone that Sony’s PlayStation 4 was the highest selling console of 2018 in the UK, continuing its extraordinarily strong performance for a system in its fifth year (now in its sixth).
This information comes to us courtesy of GamesIndustry’s Christopher Dring. In fact, PS4 sales were up in 2018 year on year in the UK, and sold over a million units, which is in line with reports we had last month about how the console had done in the country.
The Xbox One came in at second place, but the Switch is fast nipping at its heels, with the console experiencing 20% year on year growth in the UK for 2018. In total, GamesIndustry reports that just under 2.5 million consoles were sold in the UK last year, which would be a higher number than the number of consoles sold in 2017.
Conversely, sales of physical software in the UK saw a drop, with revenue down 2.8 per cent, and unit sales down by 7.1 per cent. The softer revenue drop is explained by Switch games, which are higher priced and resist price drops, doing well (Switch was the only console to see a year on year increase in software sales in the UK last year).
In the coming year, as PS4 and Xbox One officially enter their sunset years, and Switch enters the prime of its life, it will be interesting to see how the three consoles fare in the UK market.
