Europe loves the PS5 (Picture: Sony)

The recent price cuts for the PS5 have had a major effect on sales in Europe, as countries like Germany embrace PlayStation more than usual.

Ever since the Xbox Games Showcase, and Microsoft’s legal victory in the Activision Blizzard acquisition row, things have been looking up for Xbox, especially with Starfield only a couple of weeks away from release.

By comparison, Sony has suffered nothing but months of criticism and fan upset, that they refuse to announce any new single-player games. And yet those two narratives seem to have little bearing on sales, with the PlayStation 5 still outselling the Xbox Series X/S by a factor of 2 to 1.

That’s only worldwide though, as in Europe that ratio is closer to 4:1. And despite Microsoft’s recent run of good news that gap only seems to be expanding, with recent PlayStation 5 hardware sales in Europe increasing by a massive 244%, compared to July 2022.

According to chart-tracker GSD, 493,000 games consoles were sold across Europe during July – although that data doesn’t include the two biggest markets of the UK and Germany. That’s up 62.5% on July 2022, but thanks to the recent discounts from Sony the PlayStation 5 saw a massive 244% increase in sales.

Sony had complained that UK sales hadn’t increased as much as they wanted, as a result of the short-lived promotion, so it’s unclear whether they were satisfied with Europe as a whole.

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Although the British and German results aren’t a part of these stats the PlayStation 5 has always been popular here and according to GamesIndustry.biz sales are up 68% so far this year – and increasing further in August.

Germany though, tends to prefer PCs to consoles and yet separate data reveals that PlayStation 5 sales in Germany are up 90% compared to last year. All of which paints a very rosy picture for Sony.

So apparently the secret to console success is… not doing or saying anything? Who knew.

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The recent price cuts for the PS5 have had a major effect on sales in Europe, as countries like Germany embrace PlayStation more than usual.