UK games market tumbles to new low

Another month, another bleak story about the state of the UK games retail market.

This time, 78.4m was spent on boxedgames last month. That’s a six per cent drop on the 83.5m generated during June 2010.In terms of the amount of video games sold, the number isn’t quite so bad. 3,521,909 games were shifted last month, a slight dip of 1.3 per cent year-on-year.

Unfortunately July’s not shaping up to be much better. 11.3m was spent on video games last week. That is the lowest figure since the summer of 2006 (where the market value was 11.2m). That number is likely to fall further in the coming weeks.

But it hasn’t been bad news for everyone. June actually marked the most successful fullmonth so far for 3DS in terms of market share and software sales (outside of the launch period), thanks in no small part to Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D.

And 505 Games had the No.1 game last month, 2011’s most regular chart-topper: Zumba Fitness. The company was actually the fourth most successful publisher (in terms of value of software sold) last month, with Take-Two, EA and Nintendo ahead of it.

In fact, Take-Two had another storming month and was the only firm to have two games in the Top Ten (L.A. Noire and Duke Nukem Forever).

The June Top Ten
1. Zumba Fitness505 Games
2. L.A. NoireRockstar Games
3. Duke Nukem ForeverTake-Two
4. LEGO Pirates of the CaribbeanDisney
5. Dirt 3Codemasters
6. BrinkBethesda
7. FIFA 11EA
8. Infamous 2Sony
9. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3DNintendo
10. Call of Duty: Black OpsActivision

All data is courtesy of UKIE/GfK Chart-Track.