The Entertainment Retailers Association has announced that the UK video games market pulled in a whopping £3.864 billion in 2018, with over three billion (80.1%) of the figure made up of digital sales alone. The number does not include hardware.
Digital goods saw an increase of 12.5% during the last year, while sales of physical copies declined by 2.8%. That’s not to say people aren’t buying games at brick-and-mortar retailers anymore, though. 2018’s biggest selling game, FIFA 19, moved 1.89 million physical units alone out of a total of 2.5 million sold.
In terms of hardware, GI.biz reports that over 2.4 million game consoles were sold last year in Blighty, with more systems moved in 2018 compared to the year before. Of those sold, the PS4 did the most numbers, although Nintendo Switch saw the biggest growth year-on-year at 20%.
We’ve also got an idea of how well games actually sold last year in terms of physical numbers. FIFA 19 is perhaps unsurprisingly top of the list, followed by Red Dead Redemption 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.
You can see the full Top 20 below.
FIFA 191,889,4012
Red Dead Redemption 21,757,212
3 Call of Duty: Black Ops 41,172,855
4 Spider-Man 676,621
Mario Kart 8: Deluxe 458,675
Far Cry 5 434,133
Crash Bandicoot N-Sane Trilogy 430,551
God of War 399,395
Forza Horizon 4392,960
FIFA 18351,788
Grand Theft Auto V 339,805
Spyro Reignited Trilogy 333,725
Battlefield V 313,100
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey 305,937
Super Smash Bros Ultimate 284,155
Super Mario Odyssey 240,710
Call of Duty: WWII 230,576
Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu 227,767
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 226,125
Fallout 76218,534
