Pre-order crisis looms as 3.4m UK gamers hold off

Fewer UK consumers are pre-ordering video games, MCV can reveal.

20 per cent of UK gamers say they are either pre-ordering fewer titles, or have stopped pre-ordering altogether.

This comes from a survey conducted by Ipsos MORI’s GameTrack project on behalf of MCV.

Nine per cent of those surveyed said they had cut back on the number of pre-orders over the last 12 months, while 11 per cent said they had not pre-ordered anything despite doing so in the past.

Five per cent of respondents did say they had actually pre-ordered more games last year. The rest included 49 per cent who said they never pre-ordered anyway, while another 10 per cent said they had pre-ordered about the same (the rest were ‘don’t knows’).

The data also revealed that the UK is the No.1 territory across Europe for pre-orders (23 per cent of gamers say they pre-ordered a title in the last year), but it is also seeing the sharpest decline.

The reasons cited for this drop included consumers preferring to spend money on other non-gaming items and savvy gamers choosing to ‘wait for prices to come down’.

Declines in pre-orders are occurring across Europe, the survey showed. For UK, France, Germany and Spain combined, 12 per cent of gamers (10.3m) have either stopped or reduced the number of titles they have pre-ordered.

Updated: We have added in the remaining percentages for clarity.