Red Dead Redemption 2 on top on the last week of 2018

According to the latest dat from GfK and UKIE revenue generated by the UK physical games market has dropped by 2.8 percent in 2018. A total of £770 million was generated by boxed video game sales throughout the year. The total number of boxed game sales was 22 million, a drop of 7.1 percent year-on-year.

The drop in number of boxed sales was larger than the drop in revenue generated because of the rise in price of boxed games. Nintendo Switch titles, for example, actually saw an increase in boxed game sales year-on-year of 90.1 percent. This is largely due to the fact that 2018 is only the second year the console has been on sale, leading to a 73.4 percent increase in revenue generated.

Retailers may have been expecting an increase in sales given the number of big releases towards the end of the year. However, those big releases didn’t actually sell as well as their predecessors, at least in terms of physical boxed sales. These titles included Battlefield 5, Fallout 76, FIFA 19, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.

42.2 percent of all physical games sold last year were for Playstation 4, a drop of 9.7 percent year-on-year, 30.5 percent were for Xbox One, a drop of 12.7 percent year-on-year, and 24 percent were for Nintendo Switch. Making up the remaining sales were the 3DS with 2.1 percent, PC with 0.7 percent, the Nintendo Wii with 0.2 percent, and Xbox 360 with 0.2 percent.

Whilst the exact figures for console sales haven’t been confirmed year it’s been established that more were sold in 2018 than in 2017. More than 1 million Playstation 4 units were sold, and Nintendo saw a more than 20 percent growth in Nintendo Switch sales year-on-year.

Over the entire year the Playstation 4 was the most popular console, selling just under 2.5 million units in the UK.

A more extended list of top sellers can be found here.