GSD provides us with physical and digital sales figures of the European market and allows us to see the Top 20 best-selling games in February 2022. Horizon Forbidden West is confirmed as the game with the best launch on PS5, after COD.
Let’s first look at the Top 20 best-selling games in Europe in February 2022 (games with only physical sales are marked with an asterisk):
- Elden Ring (Bandai Namco)
- Horizon Forbidden West (Sony)
- Pokémon Legends: Arceus (Nintendo) *
- FIFA 22 (EA)
- Dying Light 2: Stay Human (Techland)
- Grand Theft Auto 5 (Rockstar)
- Total War: Warhammer 3 (Sega)
- Mario Party Superstars (Nintendo) *
- XCOM 2 (2K Games)
- Mario Kart 8: Deluxe (Nintendo) *
- F1 2021 (Codemasters)
- Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar)
- Big Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain (Nintendo) *
- NBA 2K22 (2K Games)
- Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (Ubisoft)
- Call of Duty: Vanguard (Activision Blizzard)
- Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury (Nintendo) *
- Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition
- Pokémon Shining Diamond (Nintendo) *
- Just Dance 2022 (Ubisoft)
As you can see Elden Ring is first. It was the best launch of a new IP in Europe since 2016, that is, since The Division. In second place we find Horizon Forbidden West which sold at 59% on PS5: the remaining 41% clearly explains why Sony continues to publish its exclusives on PS4.
However, it must be said that the PS4 version cost less and that it included a free upgrade to PS5, so a portion of those sales should actually be counted as PS5 anyway, even if it’s impossible to know how big.
The best-selling game on a single console is Pokémon Arceus Legends, which barely outperforms the PC version of Elden Ring. We note, however, that Nintendo’s game does not have sales figures for the digital versions, so its dominance is actually higher. Overall, however, Pokémon Arceus Legends manages to come “only” third in Europe.
In the fifth position, we find Dying Light 2 Stay Human, which sold 44% on PS5, 24% on PS4, 16% on Xbox Series and 12% on PC. In total, 13.56 million games were sold, + 8% compared to February 2021. 5.9 were sold in the physical version (+ 11%) and 7.66 million in the digital version (+ 6%).