【Game-Time News】
The UK games market grew by 4.4% last year, according to trade body UKIE
The agency’s new Consumer Market Valuation Report shows that the UK gaming consumer market will be worth £7.82 billion ($9.76 billion) in 2023, compared with £7.49 billion ($9.34 billion) in 2022.
The report pointed out that game software sales increased by 4.1%, totaling 5.18 billion pounds, of which less than 10% (about 495 million pounds) were physical software sales.
Physical software sales continued to decline – down 5% year over year – while digital game sales, digital PC game sales and mobile game sales all increased.
Digital game sales increased by 5.6% to £2.48 billion, digital PC game sales increased by 4.5% to £684 million, and mobile game sales increased by 4.5% to £1.52 billion.
On the hardware side, the report said that game console hardware sales increased by 12% year-on-year, while game console accessories sales increased by 3%, and VR hardware sales increased by 11%.
However, not all hardware is seeing growth – PC gaming hardware sales are down 11% in 2023 compared to 2022.
All hardware sales totaled £2.22 billion last year, an increase of 2.1%.
Dorian Block of GfK Entertainment commented that the launch performance of physical game sales was actually better than expected, thanks to the good performance of some new releases and the release of “The Legend of Zelda” on Switch.
“Sony (PS4/PS5) software revenue surpasses Nintendo (Switch) in 2023,” he said. “Total sales reach the highest average selling price ever (£36). This is because there are 17 major titles in 2023 Staying above £50 for the whole year (34% of 2023 revenue), compared with just 8 titles in 2022 (21% of 2022 revenue).”
