Quinton is a Staff Writer from the United States. In his youth, Quinton was ridiculed for making video game ranking lists instead of paying attention in math class. In adulthood, people sometimes pay him for it. Life’s a trip.
Taking his first steps into the industry in 2020, Quinton has written for several digital publications, but his permanent literary home is right here at TheGamer.
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Let’s get an important disclaimer out of the way right off the bat. The United Kingdom is not Nintendo’s best territory. Not by a long shot. That’s Japan, followed by North America. France probably comes in third. It’s not to say that the UK is just disinterested in Nintendo Switch 2. Far from the case, really. But it’s PlayStation Land, through and through.
Even so, Sony’s current console overperformed most expectations during Black Friday weekend (yes, it’s basically an entire weekend now), and the Switch 2 didn’t really do too great. Don’t run with that and make some YouTube clickbait video, I beg thee: the Switch 2 remains the fastest-selling console in US history, and it’s got banger numbers like wild in Japan. This isn’t going to be some “beginning of the end” moment for the Big N, no matter what they say. Just the same, Nintendo’s latest invention could have stood to come in a bit hotter specifically in the UK, whilst PS5 would have enjoyed a successful time with weaker numbers.
Christopher Dring notes in today’s big post from The Game Business that “there wasn’t a single new release in the European top 20 last week,” which is an interesting wrinkle in and of itself. There wasn’t much diversity, either: “EA Sports FC 26 holds the No. 1 spot, while Hogwarts Legacy saw a big boost in sales, rising two places to No. 2.” Harry Potter’s adventure actually “knocked down Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 to No. 3 and Battlefield 6 to No. 4.” (As an aside, Battlefield’s always been pretty strong in Europe, but it really delivered the goods this go-around, selling 60 percent more copies than Black Ops 7 as of late November.)
But this is all broad-scale stuff, via GSD. As for the UK, NielsenIQ gathered some key intel for Dring, and it points all signs to Sony’s reign.
“In the UK, sales of consoles were better this year than during Black Friday 2024, with revenue up 14%, and unit sales up 7%. Nintendo Switch 2 did ok, the data firm says, but it was PS5 that was the biggest driver.” -Christopher Dring, on NielsenIQ’s data
First, it’s cool that console sales are up overall year-to-year. That’s great. We love to see that. That the Switch 2 merely did “ok” is arguably a bit surprising. Again, this isn’t Nintendo’s hottest turf. But Nielsen, presumably, couches these things in relative terms. The company probably isn’t looking for Japanese or North American ratios.
“In fact,” Dring’s analysis goes on, “PS5 was the only console to do better this Black Friday than the previous one, with unit sales up 16% over the year before. PS5 had a 62% share of the console market during the week.” Here’s where things get especially interested, methinks. This means the aging workhorse Nintendo Switch did better in 2024 than the nascent Nintendo Switch 2 did in 2025. Shipment issues certainly exist; this could be a driving force behind the matter. It wasn’t exactly hard to find a Switch seven years after its launch, and while I’ve not seen reports firsthand that indicate the Switch 2 has vanished outright from UK store shelves, it is out of stock on the regular at enough retailers to matter.
PlayStation 5 is in its fifth year on the market. To bolt up from PS4 shows some smooth moves. Dring adds that “the PS5 SLim 1TB price was 21% lower compared with two weeks previously,” demonstrating aggressive motions on Sony’s part. “The PS5 Slim 825GB Digital price was 34$ lower,” which is, you know, even more aggressive. “And the PS5 Pro was down to £586, which is an all-time low.” It was the Pro’s best weekly performance outside of its launch week, which would have seen the hardcore sorts all lined up to snag one.
Nintendo has plenty of time to up its UK game, and its sales there have been pretty good thus far, regardless. But they may need to get pushier with things in the Black Fridays to come.
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There were deals to get PS5’s at around £290. That’s insanely cheap compared to normal. It wasn’t just black Friday either, it was for a good seven days or until stick ran out. Yes it was for the Slim without a disk drive but still that’s cheaper than some places were selling original Switch’s for.
2025-12-07 13:48:43
