Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) and the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE) have revealed that the country’s video games market boomed in 2017, much like the US market. Consumer spending reached a whopping £5.11 billion during the 12-month period, pushing total revenues up 12.4 percent from the previous year.
The boom is thanks in part to the Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4’s ongoing success alongside positive Xbox One S sales. The PC market also grew by 51 percent year-on-year.
On the software side, sales of boxed video games were up 3.1 percent year-on-year, and digital/online sales saw an increase of 13.4 percent.
Dorian Bloch of market research firm GfK said that the console market was enjoying a “renaissance.”
These UK figures reveal a solid performance for the physical software market, boosted by a return to growth in the overall console hardware market for the first time since 2014. With Sony’s PS4 showing four consecutive years of over 1m units sold per year, a strong performance from Microsoft’s sub £200 Xbox One S and premium core gamer Xbox One X, plus the introduction of Nintendo’s Switch enjoying the best start for a Nintendo home console since the mighty Wii back in 2006, it is clear that the console gaming market is now enjoying a renaissance.
Sales charts provided by ERA reveal that FIFA 18, Call of Duty WWII, and Grand Theft Auto V were the top-selling games. Rockstar’s unbeatable title sold over a million copies last year in the UK alone.
[Source: ERA, MCV, Games Industry]
