1.9m games were sold during Black Friday week

The numbers are in for what looks to have been a massive Black Friday week.

1,936,636 games were sold for the week ending November 26th, according to GfK figures. That’s a nine per cent increase on last year’s 1,778,851 games.

Meanwhile, 58.4m was generated in revenue for the sales period, a four per cent increase on last year’s 56m.

The increase in the market week-on-week was much bigger this year. Whereas last year, software sales rose 60 per cent for the week of Black Friday, this year that increase was 181 per cent. Revenue too saw a massive rise – 135 per cent week-on-week compared with 2015’s 32 per cent.

This is possibly due to the fact that consumer spending dipped in the weeks leading up to Black Friday this year, likely the result of UK gamers now expecting the sales event to occur.

While there are numerous factors or theories as to why the UK games market is down year-on-year, Black Friday is certainly one of them. Last week, sources told MCV that the sales event was ‘the worst thing to happen to retail’.

Black Friday also had a positive impact on the UK hardware market. GfK’s commentary for this week’s charts says that PlayStation 4 had its best sales week since its launch in 2013.