Do you know how to say 'I play video games' in French? It's "je joue aux jeux vidéo". So now you know and the French certainly like to joue aux jeux vidéo and the console they particularly like to play on is Nintendo shaped.
According to Nintendo France CEO Philippe Lavoué, "10.5 percent of the 67 million French people are equipped with a Switch". Reported by BFMTech&Co (via Resetera), it means the Switch becomes France's most popular home console of all time. It surpasses the previous record, which was held by another Nintendo console, the Wii, which sold 6.3 million units, while the Switch has now reached a total of 7.1 million sales in France.
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The Switch sold through 987,000 units in 2022 and accounted for half of all consoles sold. This success has to have something to do with Pokemon too as the series had a phenomenal year in France.
Pokemon Arceus was the country's best selling title in 2022, relegating the annual edition of FIFA, on the PS4, to second place. Overall, Switch games took nine spots on the Top 10 list of best-selling titles last year, with Pokemon Scarlet & Violet selling in excess of 700,000 copies, while older titles such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing: New Horizons continue to sell well with places on the top 10. Lavoué said that Pokemon is having "a historic year" and that it was "unheard of for a franchise in France".
While the Nintendo Switch becomes the country's most popular home console of all time, the Nintendo DS reigns as the best-selling handheld with more than 10 million units sold. Meanwhile, data on sales of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series is due to be released by France's Union of Entertainment Software Publishers "soon".
In separate figures, GamesIndustry.biz reports that the UK remains the number one games market in Europe, followed by Germany, then France. The site reported that Nintendo Switch titles do especially well in these latter countries, while in the UK the likes of FIFA, Call of Duty, LEGO Star Wars, and Elden Ring performed well in 2022.