The UK games market saw a period of great growth last year. On the physical games front, game sales increased by 2.1% last year; that’s a smaller bump, but when you’re working with a large base to begin with, higher bumps are harder to achieve. Regardless of this bump in sales, however, the Xbox One suffered last year, with physical sales declining (unlike PS4 and Nintendo, which saw YoY growth).
Digital sales grew by a much more impressive 12.1%, pointing to the increased prominence of digital in purchasing habits in the industry- and it is here that Xbox may have done well. While we don’t have platform specific breakdowns for digital game sales, given Microsoft’s recent push towards their digital ecosystem, it is not unreasonable to believe they may have experienced higher than average growth in this area. Of course, we can’t say for sure- but it is a mitigating factor to consider.
On the whole, though, console wars aside, this is good news- it indicates a healthy industry all around, which can only be good for us as gamers.