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2022 is over and it is time to take stock of a year clearly marked by two main factors in the Spanish video game market: the surprising performance of Nintendo Switch despite having been on sale for five years and the vilification of Sony when distributing PS5 consoles for these parts. This contrast was repeated practically throughout the year, as we have been collecting in Gamereactor, and the last fortnight of the calendar (week 51, from December 19 to Christmas and week 52, from December 26 to New Years), which frames the Christmas holidays, was another faithful reflection.
Nintendo has managed to capitalize with software all the installed park that it enjoyed and also the one that it has been building in recent months, which resulted in both new bombings (especially Arceus, Sports, Kirby and the recent Pokémon Scarlet and Purple, which end 2022 approaching 350,000 copies) as in additional ‘legs’ for their usual best sellers (especially Mario Kart, Minecraft and Animal Crossing). In fact, the most impressive thing during Christmas, although it had been warning since Black Friday, was the rush of Nintendo Switch Sports, which ends the year with close to 190,000 copies after distributing another 31,000 in the final fortnight, because many people have wanted to accompany their new game console to lower the nougats.
The same has happened to a Just Dance 2023 that Ubisoft will celebrate continuing to launch physically in the Nintendo hybrid… but even more will they toast the rebound of the great Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope in the final stretch of the year, which with no less than 23,000 units in the fortnight ate the grapes rubbing shoulders with no less than Splatoon 3 and Mario Strikers: Battle League Football, all around 65,000 units.
As a last mention of the most recent top 10, it should be noted that Switch does not make a full of red boxes because Sony has cast two blue ones, not white ones, from FIFA 23 and the highly discounted The Last of Us: Part II for 10 euros, for above and below in the table.
Top 10 Sales Week 52: December 26, 2022 to January 1, 2023
- FIFA 23 for PS4
- FIFA 23: Legacy Edition for Nintendo Switch
- Nintendo Switch Sports for Switch
- Pokémon Scarlet and Purple for Switch
- Just Dance 2023 for PS4
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for Switch
- Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope for Switch
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons for Switch
- The Last of Us: Part II for PS4
- Minecraft for Switch
Of course, with the year over, we can also find out the most successful games in Spanish stores in the last twelve months:
Top 15: The best-selling video games in Spain in 2022
- Pokémon Scarlet and Purple for Switch
- FIFA 23 for PS4
- Pokemon Legends Arceus for Switch
- Nintendo Switch Sports for Switch
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for Switch
- FIFA 23: Legacy Edition for Nintendo Switch
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land for Switch
- Minecraft for Switch
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons for Switch
- God of War: Ragnarok for PS4
- FIFA 22 for PS4
- God of War: Ragnarok for PS5
- FIFA 23 for PS5
- Splatoon 3 for Switch
- Grand Theft Auto V: Premium Edition for PS4
This top reflects the biggest best sellers of the year in physical format; obviously there are titles that are selling more and more in digital download format according to various factors and platforms and that would have entered the table. The comeback of NSS at the end of the year that we mentioned, after an ordeal summer that it had, has led it to touch the podium with the tips of its fingers, but nobody expected the incredible performance of the Pokémon spinoff.
The absence of some games due to their cross-platform division is also misleading, since it is entirely possible that many users bought games on PS4 with the hope of playing them soon on PS5. Sony has managed to sneak Kratos and Atreus into the middle of the table, but everything above is more than 100,000 copies, something that the Game of the Year only achieves by combining both consoles.
And it is that the huge installed park of Switch and the legs of its usual games that we mentioned above mark impressive figures for this list, leaving out other great successes candidates for GOTY such as Elden Ring, which saw its more than 120,000 units since it It came out spread over many systems. Returning to Sony, Gran Turismo 7 or Horizon: Forbidden West are cases practically identical to that of FromSoftware.
Console sales: A New Year’s resolution for Sony
But if all this means something, it is the lack of PlayStation 5 stock to be able to sell more games in its version. We said that in week 50 Sony had set its personal record for the entire year with 19,000 machines and that even that was not enough to surpass Switch in full pre-Christmas purchases, and in the days that followed it confirmed that this was an eventual peak. The company dropped to 9,500 and 6,000 machines to end the year on 180,000 PS5 in 2022, a figure that seems decent but could have been much, much higher given the demand in this country. There are already 30 million PS5s in the world, but its manufacturer is not doing much because Spain is contributing and 2023 should be the year of change.
For its part, and in the absence of official confirmation from Nintendo, Switch must be exceeding 2.5 million consoles in Spain at this time, if it has not already done so. Its 52,000 consoles in the last fortnight place the annual total above the 460,000 Nintendo Switch in 2022and it is not necessary to take out the calculator to see that the next milestone is already very close, margins of error aside.
Microsoft finally closes the year with more than 96,000 Xbox Series X|S consoles in 2022 after touching 6,000 machines in the fortnight. To be sure, the success of the white, disc-less Xbox Series S for much of the year also has an impact on physical software, not to mention the growing Xbox Game Pass digital service.
By the way, in the absence of data from Facebook and with large weekly variations with the price dance, they were distributed in stores almost 30,000 helmets Oculus Meta Quest 2 in 2022continuing to establish virtual reality in Spain while waiting to see how PS VR2 performs from next month.
We’ll be following that and other data into the new year at Gamereactor.
