Games on Discs Still Doing Not Bad

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Games on Discs Still Perform Better than Other High Street Entertainment Products. A report on the state of the high street entertainment market has found that video games on physical dics are declining at a lesser rate to other products on discs.

Carried out by the UK research group Kantar, the Entertainment Barometer report examined physical products such as CDs, DVDs, and games. Kantar found that the physical discs entertainment market declined by 3% compared to 2014 year-on-year, as the value drops by 7%. At a lesser decline to the previous year, this can be seen as a positive.

The data period of Q2 2015 found that games were the strongest performer, after a boost current generation software sales. Kantar found that the sale of physical games fell by 3.5%, a significantly lesser decline compared to the total decline in the physical entertainment market.

In terms of retailers, Kantar found that GAME performed the best out of the UK’s high street game sellers. GAME increased its sector market share to 31.7% from last year’s 29.1%. It was also found that 36.5% of Xbox on and PS4 software sales were from GAME. After issuing profit warnings and operational efficiency improvement plans, GAME’s is clearly business is clearly on the upturn.

Fiona Keenan, Kantar’s director of strategic insights, said that it has taken a couple of years for current generation console ownership to become widespread, after a spike in purchases immediately following their releases.

They also found that the most significant gains for both the market and retailers was at the end of 2015, when the Christmas period and major game releases led consumers to open their wallets. Kantar also found that product gifting rose by 40% compared to the previous year.

Evidently the high street shopping experience is still managing to bring in the customers, despite the increasing prevalence of digital downloading services. While the market is still in a decline, the tapering drop means that brick and mortar shops will still maintain a strong presence in the UK games market.