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2018 Figures Show Physical Game Sales Down, PlayStation 4 Dominant In UK

2018 Figures Show Physical Game Sales Down, PlayStation 4 Dominant In UK

PS4 games made up 42% of all games sold in the UK, and Switch software sales increased massively…

Mike Diver

Mike Diver

As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, the final sales figures for physical video games in the UK show an overall revenue drop of 2.8% compared to 2017. Which isn't all that surprising, given the medium's continuing pivot to digital distribution.

What's more surprising, perhaps: 7.1% fewer games were actually sold, in comparison to the previous year. The smaller revenue difference is down to certain titles, foremost amongst them Nintendo Switch releases, maintaining asking prices close to their launch RRPs. For example, several months after its July release, new copies of the Switch-exclusive RPG Octopath Traveler still retail for between £40 (Amazon) and £53 (GAME).

In total, physical/boxed game sales generated £770 million in Britain. Of these games sold, PlayStation 4 software enjoyed the largest piece of the pie, with releases for Sony's console adding up to 42.2% of all sales. Xbox One titles amounted to 30.5% of the total, and Switch games 24%. The remaining 3.3% was dominated by the 3DS (2.1%), with Nintendo Wii sales representing 0.2%.

(Were you buying new Wii games in 2018? What's wrong with you?)

Despite PlayStation's position of commercial dominance in 2018, sales of its (boxed) games actually fell by 9.7%, even with great exclusives like God of War and Marvel's Spider-Man on shelves. Xbox One game sales also fell, down 12.7% against 2017 - not even the phenomenal Forza Horizon 4 could do anything to improve that result.

Only the Switch saw an increase in boxed software sales, in its first full year on the market - those itty-bitty game cards were up a whopping 90.1%, as more and more people picked up the hybrid console. That pushed Switch revenues up 73.4% against 2017.

Hardware figures are yet to be published - as are digital games sales numbers (ha, yeah, right). But GamesIndustry.biz estimates that around two and a half million new game consoles were sold in the UK in 2018, and over a million of those were PS4s. The three best-selling boxed video games in the UK for 2018 were - surprising exactly nobody - FIFA 19, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII.


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Topics: video games, sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, PlayStation