Brexit is widely expected to lead to a battering of the UK’s economy, but the British Pound has already started to suffer relative to other currencies even though the actual split hasn’t happened yet. In context of these market conditions, Microsoft has announced that it will be raising the price of Xbox Live subscriptions across the board in the UK.

The monthly subscription now costs £7 instead of £6, quarterly subscriptions are £18 instead of £15, while the annual subscription is £50 rather than £40. The old UK pricing was actually cheaper than in a lot of the other markets, so in a sense, this pricing brings it more in line with the rest of the world. Still, I have to imagine that doesn’t come as any consolation to UK Xbox owners in the slightest.

Microsoft has also announced in the notification email that it is sending existing subscribers that for them, these new prices won’t kick in until August 7 this year (for new subscribers, they are effective starting May 8)—so you have plenty of time to, for example, subscribe for a few months in advance now with the current, lower pricing, and then not have to worry about it.

But hey, maybe if console subscription services are deemed to be illegal in terms of how they handle renewals in the UK, this will all be a moot point.

Stadia’s reveal last week was impressive and ambitious, but left a lot of questions in its wake. Nonetheless, it seems like Google at least achieved a surprising amount of awareness among the mass public. According to a survey in the UK by Harris Interactive, 39% of the UK public surveyed said they are aware of the Stadia, with 10% of them stating they are “very familiar”. Those are good numbers for Google, a new entrant, to be working with.

34% of UK gamers surveyed are interested in subscribing—although this is a high number, Stadia falters when put next to the competition. When asked about the consideration of buying into a next-gen platform relative to the whole spectrum of offering, Stadia actually trails behind PS5, which is the leading next gen offering with 38% stating a consideration to buy it, over 26% for Xbox Scarlett, 25% for Stadia, and 21% for a hypothetical Nintendo Switch 2. 19% of the surveyed people said they are likelier to pick Stadia over any other options, while 41% of the respondents said that for PS5, 24% for Xbox Scarlett, and 17% for Switch 2.

The top reasons stated for hesitation among respondents are the possible monthly fee (none has officially been confirmed yet), as well as the lack of game ownership relative to other platforms. These are fundamental issues Google will have to work to allay the perception of with the public—they can’t make them go away because they are intrinsic to streaming, but they can at least shift the perception of them from being overly negative.

Stadia is due out in US, Canada, Europe, and the UK in 2019.

Capcom’s Devil May Cry 5 ended up topping sales charts in the United Kingdom in the week of its release, Gfk-Tracker announced today. It sold 20,872 units across all platforms, and is the bestselling performance for a Devil May Cry release in the UK since DmC: Devil May Cry… which, to be fair, was the last Devil May Cry release, not counting re-masters and re-releases in the interim.

It’s not a “set charts on fire” level performance, but it did well enough, and hopefully, sales for the game will be in line with the rest of the series, given the overwhelmingly positive reception the game has received.

On the other end of the spectrum is Left Alive, the shooter from Square Enix in the Front Mission universe, which, in the wake of poor reviews, has underperformed terribly—it launched at the 39th place on the charts, with 947 units sold. Holy crap.

You can see the top ten on the charts below.

1. Devil May Cry V
   
2. Red Dead Redemption 2
   
3. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
   
4. Anthem
   
5. FIFA 19
   
6. Far Cry New Dawn
   
7.  The LEGO Movie 2 Videogame
   
8. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
   
9. Metro Exodus
   
10.  Grand Theft Auto V

Dragalia Lost, the new action RPG from Nintendo and Cygames for smartphones that represents Nintendo’s first new IP launch for smartphones yet, launched last year, but only in some regions. In spite of this, however, it seems that the game has managed to do quite well for itself.

Now, Nintendo and Cygames are giving it a shot at even greater success, by launching it in yet another major market. Dragalia Lost is available now on iOS and Android smartphones in the UK. You can get it from the iOS App Store and Google Play.

It’s unclear what is taking this game so long to launch in so many countries (as of right now, it is still not available in most of mainland Europe, or Canada), but I would imagine it’s some regulations pertaining to lootboxes, of which this game uses a form, that Nintendo is researching before launching the game in a market.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Sony’s PlayStation 4 was the highest selling console of 2018 in the UK, continuing its extraordinarily strong performance for a system in its fifth year (now in its sixth).

This information comes to us courtesy of GamesIndustry’s Christopher Dring. In fact, PS4 sales were up in 2018 year on year in the UK, and sold over a million units, which is in line with reports we had last month about how the console had done in the country.

The Xbox One came in at second place, but the Switch is fast nipping at its heels, with the console experiencing 20% year on year growth in the UK for 2018. In total, GamesIndustry reports that just under 2.5 million consoles were sold in the UK last year, which would be a higher number than the number of consoles sold in 2017.

Conversely, sales of physical software in the UK saw a drop, with revenue down 2.8 per cent, and unit sales down by 7.1 per cent. The softer revenue drop is explained by Switch games, which are higher priced and resist price drops, doing well (Switch was the only console to see a year on year increase in software sales in the UK last year).

In the coming year, as PS4 and Xbox One officially enter their sunset years, and Switch enters the prime of its life, it will be interesting to see how the three consoles fare in the UK market.

While the Switch has been doing great around the world, it has failed to catch on in the UK to the same extent as it has everywhere else. It’s been doing just fine there. However, its success there has been decidedly more muted than it is elsewhere.

It looks like the Switch may be reaching critical momentum there, though. According to Christopher Ding, editor of GamesIndustry, the website that reports on Gfk-Tracker’s reports for video game hardware and software sales in the UK, Switch sales in the UK have risen meteorically over the last three weeks. Based on what he posted on Twitter, in that period, the console has sold 200,000 units in the UK—for comparison, the Switch sold 300,000 units in the UK in the first eight months it was on the market, which includes the launch of the console itself, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Splatoon 2, and Super Mario Odyssey.

This also means the Switch is up roughly 50% over the same tracking period last year (when it sold roughly 130,000 units). The success of the Switch in the UK can probably be cited to some aggressive retailer specific bundles there, which have effectively given the console a price drop, as well as the launch of some software like Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee!, alongside Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

So, at last, it seems as though the Switch has some good momentum going in the UK. Now to see if Nintendo can actually sustain it going forward.

Nintendo Switch has effectively had an unofficial price cut in the UK since Black Friday – now including a free game. The result has been around 200,000 Switch consoles sold over the last 3 weeks

— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) December 10, 2018

In all the UK sales news that we got today (including about how well all three consoles sold there last week, as well as news on how software, especially Nintendo software, was doing there), it seems like one rather significant milestone got overlooked. Christopher Dring, editor at GamesIndustry, the site that reports Gfk-Tracker’s weekly sales data for UK, noted on his Twitter that Super Mario Odyssey became the second Switch game to cross 500,000 copies sold at retail.

The only other Switch game to achieve this milestone also prominently features Mario—Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which has been a fixture of the UK software charts for over a year now. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has not yet achieved this milestone (though given that digital sales are not included in these totals, it is highly probable, even likely, that it crossed this a while ago).

Super Mario Odyssey doing well in a country that loves 3D platformers—just look at Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy’s performance in the UK last year—shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. But given Nintendo’s historic weakness in the country, I suppose it counts as a win to them regardless.

Super Mario Odyssey is now the second Switch game in the UK to sell over half a million copies (in a box). The other is Mario Kart 8: Deluxe

— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) November 26, 2018

It seems like Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee! are doing their job, which was to sell a whole lot of people into picking up a Nintendo Switch so that it could meet Nintendo’s obscene target of 20 million systems shipped this financial year. We already know that their release caused the Switch to sell 200,000 units in Japan last week. We also know that the Switch performed well in the UK in Black Friday week, too.

Now, based on software sale spikes for Nintendo evergreen titles on the Switch, we can conclude that a whole lot of new people have picked up the system, too. Coming as it does right in the wake of Pokemon’s launch, we can credit some of these increased sales to it to some effect.

Gfk-Tracker (via GamesIndustry) reports that Nintendo’s evergreens—Super Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild—were up 98%, 110%, and 111% in sales in the UK last week, itself up from their already increased sales the week before (the week of Pokemon’s release).

For now, it seems like the Switch is managing to sell quite a few units, though how well it keeps this up in the coming weeks is what will be the real test.

It seems like there was a boom in console sales in the UK during Black Friday week, with GamesIndustry reporting that over 300,000 consoles were sold in the country for that tracking period. Apparently, all three consoles sold quantities very close to each other—though the PS4 came in at first, narrowly beating out the Xbox One, which narrowly beat out the Nintendo Switch.

300,000 units sold is a great amount, and the fact that it was pretty much evenly spread across all the machines indicates that the UK games industry was healthy for this period, and that all platforms managed to drive interest in the island nation. It also, reportedly, matches with the 300,000 consoles sold last year during the same period—which indicates that there was no year on year growth. The silver lining, however, is that there was no decline.

How the three consoles continue to do in the UK in the coming weeks will be interesting to see. At the very least we know that new releases on the whole seem to be doing well in the country, as of last week’s charts.

The UK has always been a very receptive market for PlayStation; while Sega had made some inroads there before, the original PlayStation was the first console to truly break into the mainstream there. Through the years, Sony has continued to cater to the region exceptionally well, and PlayStation is basically synonymous with console gaming in the region.

How can I just make such a statement without backing it up, you ask? This sounds like confirmation bias fueled anecdotal evidence, you say? Well, no, I have some empirical evidence on my side here. According to an analyst, PlayStation is the third most recognized brand (among all brands, period) in the United Kingdom, behind only Apple and LEGO (which were #1 and #2 respectively). This means that not only did PlayStation beat out its competition Xbox and Nintendo, it also is more recognizable to the general public there than brands such as Coca Cola, Amazon, Starbucks, McDonalds, Microsoft, and Google, a word so ubiquitous that we’ve basically made a verb out of it.

And what of the competition? Surprisingly enough, given that this is the UK, a market famously hostile to Nintendo, the Big N comes out ahead of Xbox here. Nintendo is the eleventh most recognized brand in the country, narrowly missing the top ten. Xbox comes in at seventeen.

So, yeah- the next time someone tells you that PlayStation’s dominance in the UK could be overturned, point out the sheer inertia going in Sony’s favor.