Hogwarts Legacy is the best selling game of the year, so far – WGB, Home of AWESOME Reviews

The GSD has released a huge bunch of data covering the last six months of game and hardware sales. The data covers all the big European countries and most of the major publishers, and includes both physical and digital sales with Nintendo and 505 Games being the exceptions.

The first piece of information to absorb is that digital sales continue to dominate physical: digital sales accounted for 47 million copies sold, while physical clocked in at 29.1 million. That’s a drop of 6% for physical games from last year, and a rise of 9% for digital.

Hogwarts Legacy has comfortably claimed the very top spot, managing to selling a whopping 69% more than Elden Ring over the same period of time last year. Back in May it was reported that Hogwarts Legacy had sold over 15 million copies, and that number is undoubtedly still going up.

It has stiff competition from 2nd place, though. Diablo 4 is already the second best selling game of the year despite only being available for a couple of weeks. According to Activision-Blizzard its their fastest selling game ever, and had 10 million players in June.

FIFA 23 is doing well, too, managing to net 24% more sales than last years game.

Then there’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in 4th. It’s a little problematic because Nintendo don’t report on digital sales, meaning it could potentially be higher on the list. But we do know that, according to the GSD, Tears of the Kingdom is the best-selling physical game of the year so far, while Hogwarts Legacy is the best-selling digital title.

* Digital data unavailable

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

Digital data includes games sold in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and United Kingdom.

Physical data includes all games, but only those sold in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom.