Even as the Japanese game market is reporting rebounding retail software sales on the back of the unlikeliest saviors, the UK retail game market seems to be in some sort of trouble. Over 28 million games were sold at retail in the UK in 2015, which is a fine number, but is also a 6% drop over 2014 software sales.
This is in spite of the fact that 2015 had far more higher profile releases than 2014, and the PS4 and Xbox One saw their game sales spike sharply; even the Wii U saw an increase over 2014 sales thanks to the release of Super Mario Maker, Splatoon, and Xenoblade. Unfortunately, the declining Xbox 360 and PS3 pulled the entire market down.
Before one decides to call doom and gloom on the back of something like this, however, it is important to remember that digital game sales are not tracked by GfK Chart-Track. In fact, with current game consoles increasingly trending towards digital sales, it is likelier that the UK games market saw an incline in 2015, which is just not reflected at retail, that’s all.
