UK retail resilient in face of summer drought

How To Train Your Dragon 2 was the only new game to make the UK Chart-Track Retail Top 50 last month.

As a result, the best-selling games of July were Watch Dogs at No.1 (released in May), Sniper Elite III at No.2 (released in June) and FIFA 14 at No.3 (released in September 2013). At No.4 it was Wolfenstein: New Order (May), while Titanfall (March) rounded off the Top Five.

Given the dearth of new releases, it will come as no surprise that the number of boxed games sold last month was down 47 per cent compared with June. In terms of revenue, the decline was even steeper: a drop of 51 per cent. (Overall, 1.1m physical games were sold between June 29th and July 26th, which generated just 6.6m.)

Of course, it’s easy to be negative in today’s market, but a closer look at the numbers paints a slightly rosier picture for the UK High Street. For starters, the number of games sold in July 2014 was actually up two per cent compared with July 2013. Meanwhile, in revenue terms last month was up by almost 18 per cent compared with the same period a year before.

This figure also does not include points cards sales or hardware sales, which have grown significantly this year. According to our friends at retail, hardware sales are up by around 65 per cent this year. Most of this is down to the PS4 and Xbox One, but there’s also been a significant improvement in sales for both Wii U and PlayStation Vita.

The biggest games publisher of the month was EA; the firm has reclaimed its position at the top of the rankings after being knocked off by Ubisoft last month.

All figures courtesy of UKIE/Gfk Chart-Track.