The UK Games Industry in 2018: Winners and Losers

January 11th, 2019, 16:08 Posted By: wraggster

Last year was a mixed 12 months for the UK boxed games market.
Revenue from boxed software fell 2.8 per cent year-on-year, which is a modest fall and primarily driven by underperforming AAA games. The actual number of physical games dropped 7.1 per cent.
However, console sales rose slightly, and there were three games released that sold over one million units in physical form.
Now with all the data to hand, courtesy of GfK and UKIE, we can take a closer look at how 2018 was for individual businesses operating in the UK.
PLAYSTATION DOMINATES AS NINTENDO GROWS
This was another year of dominance for Sony. 48% of all boxed games sold last year in the UK were for PS4 (slightly down over 2017), and PS4 console sales topped over 1m (GI sources). The number of consoles sold is on par with 2017, which means PS4 in the UK outperformed the rest of the world, as global PS4 sales dipped slightly year-on-year.
It was also a good year for PlayStation as a publisher. The success of God of War and (in particular) Spider-Man, saw Sony claim 9.6% of the market as a games publisher - 1.7 per cent higher than in 2017. Spider-Man alone sold 676,621, making it the fourth best-selling physical game of the year, while God of War was at No.8 with 399,395 copies sold.
Another big winner of the year was Nintendo. The second year of Switch continued where the first left off, and 16.8% of all games sold last year were for Nintendo's latest console - that's more than double 2017's market share.
Nintendo's was the UK's second biggest games publisher last year as 14.1 per cent of all games sold were published by the company. It meant Nintendo was No.2 in the publisher rankings, just 0.6 per cent behind EA.
Mario Kart 8: Deluxe was the No.1 Nintendo game of the year, with 458,675 units sold. Meanwhile, Pokemon: Let's Go, Pikachu/Eevee sold over 338,270 copies, Super Smash Bros Ultimate shifted 284,155 copies, and Super Mario Odyssey managed 240,710 sales.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...ers-and-losers

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