PS5 sales dominated in August as Starfield sees minor increase for Xbox

Hardware and software sales for the UK in August were driven by temporary price cuts of the PS5, as Armored Core 6 did surprisingly well.

August is never one of the busier months of the year for gaming but thanks to price cuts for the PlayStation 5 it saw hardware sales increase by 22% over July, even as software sales fell by 2% – if you don’t count Baldur’s Gate 3.

Starfield early access didn’t start until September 1 so it’s difficult to say how much affect it had on Xbox sales before that, but according to the latest UK hardware data it was fairly minimal.

PlayStation 5 sales increased 42% in August, compared to just a 7% increase for Xbox Series X/S, and 5% for Nintendo Switch. That means that for the whole year so far, the PlayStation 5 is up 60%, Switch is down 10%, and Xbox is down 23%.

There have been signs, such as sales charts on Amazon, that Starfield is positively affecting Xbox console sales but apparently they didn’t rise that much in the weeks immediately before its launch.

The major increase in PlayStation 5 was due to price cuts, so if they hadn’t happened its performance may have been closer to that of the other consoles.

Although Sony has not announced anything, it’s believed that the cuts were to clear out the majority of current inventory, before the release of a new PS5 Slim model. Which means the discounts are unlikely to be repeated once that’s out.

According to GamesIndustry.biz, the top six accessories of the month were all PlayStation 5 related – further showing the dominance of the console, despite Sony’s continued silence and the lack of any major new exclusives.

Software sales were down 2.2% on July but although Baldur’s Gate 3 was almost certainly the biggest seller of the month Larian Studios does not provide sales data and so they aren’t included in the charts at all.

That meant FIFA 23 took the top spot (driven by discounted sales of the eShop Switch version) and Armored Core 6 took second place, which is an excellent result for such a niche series and clearly a knock-on effect of the success of FromSoftware’s Elden Ring.

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