V Rising tops UK charts in May | UK Monthly Charts

Vampire survival game V Rising emerged from Early Access and swooped to the top of the charts in the UK during May.

The PC game received strong reviews upon release, with a PS5 version due in June 11.

However, it was a slow month for game sales overall, with 1.85 million games sold, a drop of 21% compared with May 2023. Last year, the games market was boosted by the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, plus the release of Hogwarts Legacy on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Elsewhere, the previous month's No.1 Fallout 4 manages to remain in the Top Five at No.4. The 2015 game surged up the charts in April following the launch of the Amazon Prime TV show combined with some price discounting.

Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut jumps up the charts following the game's release on PC, landing at No.6. It is PlayStation Studios' second biggest PC release (behind Helldivers 2), and its biggest internally developed PC launch. After two weeks, it has narrowly sold more than 2022's Spider-Man: Remastered

The final new releases in the Top Ten is the remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for Nintendo Switch (digital data missing). It's a decent debut for the game, with physical sales above both last year's Super Mario RPG and 2020's Paper Mario: The Origami King

Console market continues to slip

Just under 65,000 games consoles were sold in the UK over May (GfK panel data), a drop of 10% on the month before and nearly 33% down on may last year. PS5 was the No.1 format again, but saw sales down 13% over April.

The biggest reason for the tough year-on-year comparison is actually Nintendo Switch, which posted impressive console sales in May 2023 following the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Switch sales are also down 9% over the month before.

Xbox Series S and X is in third spot, with sales also down 9% month-on-month.

Over in accessories, 475,429 products were sold in the UK during May, down 12.6% over April, by up 5% over May last year. The market was driven by the White (No.1) and Midnight Black (No.2) PS5 DualSense controllers, meanwhile the PlayStation Portal Remote Player has jumped back into the Top Ten at No.3.

Overall, game and console revenue has taken a sharp fall in the UK this year, but actually accessory sales are up 21% year-to-date.

"PC gaming accessories - driven by mice/keyboards/headsets - are up 8%, but console gaming accessories are up +26%," says GfK games boss Dorian Bloch.

"The main growth categories for console accessories are controllers, which is up 22% due to the PS5 joypads, namely DualSense, DualSense Edge and PlayStation Portal. But controllers are also slightly up within the Xbox space. For PlayStation this is due to first-party controllers, but for Xbox this is split between Microsoft, Acco and PDP.

"Console gaming headsets are up 17%, driven by PlayStation headsets and Sony’s existing Pulse 3D products, but most notably since Week eight with the introduction of Pulse 3D Elite, which is driving the Pulse range and increasing Sony’s overall revenue share.

"SteelSeries products for PlayStation have been driving things, too, most notably the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless, which even at around £300 remains a SteelSeries top volume seller."

UK GSD May 2024 Top 10 (Digital and Physical)

*Digital Data unavailable

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