MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
The steady drop in market value and unit sales continued last week, with UK games retail shifting nine per cent fewer games week-on-week.
EA held the lion’s share of the market last week with nine games in the Top 40. The latest release in its long-running SSX snowboarding franchise finally hit shelves after a five-year hiatus and went straight to No.1, though this wasn’t enough to reverse the weekly market decline.
Nintendo’s new release Mario Party 9 was the third best-selling game of the week ahead of Uncharted: Golden Abyss on PS Vita, which saw a 71 per cent sales drop. FIFA?12 took No.2.
Overall the UK games retail market generated 12.1m from sales of gaming products last week – a nine per cent drop from 13.3m. Just over half a million game units were sold, which was also nine per cent fewer than the previous week’s 555,632.
EA continues its string of big releases with Mass Effect 3 and The Sims 3: Showtime on sale today (Friday, March 9th), although those titles are not being stocked by GAME and Gamestation. Street Fighter X Tekken also hits shelves today, but again not in GAME.
