Retail giants Play.com and GAME have benefited from a sales surge following last week’s BAFTA video
game awards.

Play.com smashed its target for new customers for the week, with a 14 per cent increase in new customers over the firm’s target figures.

Meanwhile, GAME Group’s COO Terry Scicluna told MCV that a ‘real buzz’ had been created following last week’s ceremony.

“The reaction in GAME stores and online to the BAFTAs has been fantastic,” enthused Scicluna.

“We’ve been promoting the awards heavily – to raise the profile of the nominated and winning games as well as the GAME Award of 2008 which was voted for by the public.

“In all GAME stores the nominated games were stickered as official BAFTA nominees, and in the last week the winning games have been re-stickered to highlight their Award success. It was brilliant that over 60,000 people voted for the GAME Award on our specially created site, which then linked through to game.co.uk so that customers could buy the games straight away.”

BAFTA’s head of Awards Anne-Marie Flynn was delighted by the news: “BAFTA’s power and influence in terms of films can have a major impact on the box office. This year in games we received more media interest than ever before, so it stands to reason that this heightened profile and awareness would translate into an upsurge in sales.

“Our sponsor GAME has been a wonderful partner and
has really pulled out the stops to maximise the power of the brand in-store. In addition we have had requests from companies for the artwork to sticker their games – and I am sure that even more will take advantage of this opportunity in the run-up to Easter.”