80% of video game sales are now digital in the UK

New figures gathered by the ERA (Entertainment Retailers Association) show that digital game sales now account for 80% of all video game sales in the UK. Before I go any further and lead people to believe something that isn’t true I would like to stress that this figure also includes mobile games and micro transactions, both of which aren’t usually purchased in a shop, so please take these figures with a pinch of salt. I wanted to make that clear first, as there’s various news websites shouting about this figure but leaving that key point out.

The full sales breakdown can be found below:

Source: ERA

As well as the revelation that people are beginning to buy games digitally (who would have thought), another interesting fact is that gaming sales in 2018 were higher than both music and video combined for the first time, and this includes both physical sales and digital sales. The gaming market is now worth a whopping £3.864bn, a number which has more than doubled since 2007.

Interestingly, physical game sales kept fairly stable in 2018, dropping only 2.8%, while video and music physical sales took a huge hit, dropping 16.9% and 16.6% respectively. 

This is, of course, great news for all gamers out there, as more sales means more money in developers pockets, which should lead to them having more money to invest back into developing even better games in the future; unless it’s EA, of course, who will just split the profits with their shareholders and give us mostly the same games year on year, riddled with micro-transactions so they can milk their fans for as much as they can.

If you’re interested, the top selling ‘physical’ games of 2018 were as follows: