Black Friday 2023 breaks UK games retail records

The retail event was only surpassed by 2020 and 2013’s Black Fridays, both of which were console launch years

The UK enjoyed a record Black Friday in the games market thanks to discounts to consoles and physical games.

That’s according to data from GfK (via GI.biz) which shows that £167 million worth of video game products were sold over the retail event, including the highest Black Friday sales of gaming accessories recorded thus far.

“VR was in the spotlight over Black Friday 2023 and this was the biggest ever revenue week for VR,” said GfK games boss Dorian Bloch (via GI.)

“Gaming Headsets show a similar picture to joypads, with a reverse on units and slight revenue increase,” Bloch said.

“For headsets, the under £60 category grew 5% points to 45% of overall revenue and this segment actually saw an average selling price increase from £25 to £29.

“At the same time the over £100 category took 26% of revenue in both time periods, but the average selling price grew from £139 to £156, which confirms a trend that has been happening for a long time – namely that the premium end of the market is highly prized by consumers, willing to trade upwards to higher priced SKUs.”

Console hardware sales were up 34% over 2022’s Black Friday. This was largely driven by the PlayStation 5, owing to limited availability in 2022, compared to 2023’s ample stock of Sony‘s console. PS5’s Black Friday performance was up 217% over 2022, according to the data.

The data also shows that it was the second biggest week for combined sales of the four main consoles (PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Switch) since all three were on the market. The largest week was the PS5’s launch, which also coincided with the second week of availability for the Xbox consoles.