HMV: ‘We’d still be No.1 if not for games’

HMV says a report claiming Amazon is now the UK’s No.1 entertainment retailer is misleading”, as it takes game sales into account.

Kantar Worldpanel said Amazon overtook HMV as the UK’s biggest entertainment retailer in the three months ending December 25th. This is in terms of boxed films, games and music sales, as well as digital music downloads.

But HMV has described the report as ‘skewed’ as it includes sales of video games. The High Street retailer says it is still No.1 in terms of CD and DVD sales.

A spokesperson for HMV told NME: We’re not sure on what basis these calculations were made, but what we do know is that our market share for music and visual products is up, and we believe the figures are a little misleading as they are heavily skewed by the inclusion of games.

Our sales and share on games were markedly down last year, so if you were to take this out of the equation, HMV would still be ahead as the leading entertainment retailer for music and visual combined.

We have exciting plans to develop a far more integrated multi-channel retail offer that we are confident will deliver significant benefits to our customer this year.”

HMV’s CEO Simon Fox told MCV last week that despite the retailer’s drop in market share, it would not give up on games.