A new report from British trade organization ELSPA has revealed a number of interesting facts and figures about the UK games industry, including the suggestion that the UK games market accounts for 13.3 percent of all global software sales – just behind Japan at 14.7 percent and the USA at 39.4 percent.
If accurate, this percentage makes the UK market more than twice the size of Germany, the second largest European market for games. Across the whole of Europe, according to the company, the UK accounts for 32.8 percent of sales, followed by Germany at 17.9 percent, France at 15.3 percent, Scandinavia at 7.7 percent, Spain at 7.6 percent and Italy at 7.4 percent.
Another interesting aspect of the report relates to the lifetime-to-date hardware figures for the UK, which put the PSone and PlayStation 2 well ahead, with 7.19 and 8.03 million consoles, respectively. These figures dwarf those for the Xbox at 2.14 million and the GameCube at 1.15 million. The Xbox 360 is currently put at a userbase of 150,000.
The UK’s traditionally mild interest in portable consoles is illustrated with a lifetime figure of only 6.63 million for the original Game Boy and 4.55 million for the Game Boy Advance. The current total for the Nintendo DS is put at 0.95 million and the PSP at 0.81 million.
In terms of software sales, the UK market fell by 0.1 percent in 2005, during which the PlayStation 2 registered 26.50 million sales. The Xbox recorded 6.57 million, the GameCube 1.22 million, the Xbox 360 440,000 and the PC games market 14.3 million sales. The Game Boy Advance sold 3.42 million units of software, with 1.85 million for the Nintendo DS and 2.92 million for the PSP.
The full report, titled The UK Interactive Entertainment Industry 2005,
can be viewed [PDF link] at the ELSPA website.
