The Entertainment Retailer's Association's annual analysis of music, video and games sales in the UK shows a -3.1% decrease in games sales in 2019, the first decline in UK revenues for 7 years.
Despite still accounting for 48.4% of the total entertainment market, UK game sales dropped from £3.9bn to £3.77bn.
The overall decline was largely due to a -21.7% drop in physical sales, down from £769.9m to £602.6, which was not counterbalanced by the small +1.1% increase in digital sales to £3.17bn.
As before with the last decline in UK game sales back in 2013 - and as ERA state - these figures are likely part of an inevitable slowdown ahead of the launch of the next generation of Sony and Microsoft consoles later in 2020.
While ERA use the same physical and digital sales data sources as Ukie in our annual UK Consumer Game Market Valuation, we expect IHS will update their digital sales estimates in due course for our 2019 valuation, due in time for the London Games Festival, and we will complete the overall software sales picture with our usual includion of pre-owned sales, provided by Kantar, as well as further analysis of game hardware and wider game culuture revenues.
