Game Sales Surpassed Video In UK

Sales of P.C. games in the UK have surpassed those of videos is to initial time, new total suggest.

The Electronic Retailers Association (ERA) mentioned sales of 1.93bn in 2011 done the gaming attention the country's greatest entertainment sector.

By contrast, sales of DVDs and other video formats totalled 1.80bn, whilst song pulled in 1.07bn.

However, the games attention has had a rough beginning to 2012, with high lane sequence Game confronting administration department .

Major publishers such as Electronic Arts had refused to do business with the tradesman over concerns surrounding its financial future.

In the initial 11 weeks of this year, the ERA mentioned video sales were value more than two times those of games.

By more aged over the entire of final year games accounted for 40.2% of the entertainment market, video for 37.6% and song for 22.2%.

Total sales in 2011 for games, video and song fell year-on-year by 3.3% to 4.80bn.

"This is a thespian time is to entertainment market," mentioned Kim Bayley, executive broad of the ERA.

"It is an ancestral growth is to games zone to have overtaken video final year. Video has long been the greatest entertainment sector. Sales so far this year, however, indicate video is not going down without a fight."

Piers Harding-Rolls, head of games at IHS Screen Digest, corroborated up this perspective - suggesting that Game's struggles would see total opposite the attention dip, if usually is to beginning of the year.

"If Game Group is significantly downsized as a chain, or if its trade continues to be paltry in anyway, it is expected that there will be a few knock-on repercussions on the sales promising is to UK marketplace deliberation its size and attain as a chain," he told the BBC.

"Catalogue sales look the many exposed, but we design the repercussions to be proxy as the other dilettante chains, independents and the countless other retailers, both high lane and online, take up any tardy left in the market.

"The UK is the many aggressive sell games marketplace in Europe - as such we do not think gaps in the marketplace will be left unplugged for any length of time."