2018 was a good year for the video games industry in the UK, with revenue from the industry in the nation accounting for more than films and music combined. Now, thanks to data collated by GfK and UKIE (via GamesIndustry), we have broken down figures of which areas the market excelled in, where it saw growth, and more. In UK throughout 2018, the PS4 was the dominant gaming system in terms of marketshare for boxed software sales, with 48 per cent of all physical video game unit sales being for games on the PS4. This should come as no surprise, given the console’s popularity in the region, as well as the fact that it was the highest selling console for 2018 in UK.
The Nintendo Switch also saw spectacular growth in terms of marketshare of boxed software unit sales in the UK, owing to the console’s ever-growing popularity in the region. 16.8 per cent of all physical games sold were on the Nintendo Switch, which is more than twice as much as the numbers it did in 2017. However, it was still placed third in the marketshare charts, with the Xbox One placed second with 30.2 per cent software marketshare. Surprisingly, it was the Nintendo 3DS that came in at fourth place, claiming 3 per cent of the marketshare, coming ahead of PC with 0.9 per cent.
It’s worth noting that these figures only take physical software sales into account, and in all likeliness, if digital sales were included, PC (which is typically a digital-sales dominated platform) would probably have much higher numbers.
You can take a look at the full charts below.
- PS4 – 48%
- Xbox One – 30.2%
- Nintendo Switch – 16.8%
- Nintendo 3DS – 3%
- PC – 0.9%
- Xbox 360 – 0.5%
- Nintendo Wii – 0.3%
- PS3 – 0.3%
- Wii U – 0.1%
