Game charts tell you a lot about what is going on in the video game development and gaming market at large. They provide a snapshot of which games are selling, which titles are gaining momentum, which releases are attracting the most attention from players, and much more. And this is why we are very much interested in the charts and what the numbers have to say.
At UK Games Journal, we explore key metrics, statistics and sales data from the UK video games market; we discuss what these figures show, the changes taking place over time, and their significance to the wider UK video games industry, as well as to gamers and their purchasing habits.
If you are a gaming enthusiast, a player, someone interested in the UK gaming industry, or especially a game developer in the UK, this kind of insight is particularly valuable. So, why don’t you explore the UK games charts and market with us?
Here are some of the key areas we will be covering:
How UK Video Game Charts Track Popular Releases
As mentioned, weekly video game charts are one of the easiest ways to see which games are performing strongly. They give a regular snapshot of the titles selling the most copies and how new releases perform against games that have been on the market for some time.
In the UK, the definitive entity responsible for this data is Ukie (The UK Interactive Entertainment Association). Ukie partners with GfK Entertainment and a standardised international tracking metric known as Games Sales Data (GSD). Together, they pool real-time point-of-sale data to map exactly which releases the country is playing.
At UK Games Journal, we track these charts to understand what they tell us about the UK gaming market and the games attracting the most player attention.
What Chart Movements Tell Us About Game Sales
Where a game appears on the chart is important, but how its position changes can tell us even more. For example, if a new release is moving quickly toward the top of the chart, that can indicate strong sales shortly after launch. And if a title falls several positions in the following weeks, it may suggest that its initial sales momentum has started to slow.
The same logic applies at market level. UKIE’s 2010 year-end market report valued the entire UK video game market at £2.875 billion. While this is a massive sum, it actually represented a 13% sales decline from 2009.
Information like this gives developers, publishers, retailers, and players a way to track the performance of major releases and give interested people a look into how the UK video game development industry is doing.
How Digital Downloads Changed the UK Games Market
Before digital downloads became a major part of the market, buying a video game was usually through a physical copy, that is, visiting a shop and purchasing a boxed game, whether it was on a cartridge, CD or DVD. And because this physical retail was such an important part of the market, boxed game sales were central to how video game performance was measured. They show which games consumers were buying and how new releases were performing across the country.
The growth of the internet has, however, changed the way people buy video games. Instead of going to a shop and taking home a boxed copy, players now buy games online and download them directly to their console or computer. This obviously changed how the UK games market is measured, as digital sales have increased.
However, that does not push boxed games or physical sales entirely out of the room, because tracking either metric alone now provides a completely distorted view of the market. Even though digital sales are now dominant, physical sales still happen. And even games that no longer have physical versions still had physical versions quite recently. So it’s inaccurate to measure these games’ performance, especially in the past few years, without factoring in physical sales too.
At UK Games Journal, we explore these different forms of sales data and the way they are reported. We look at both physical and digital sales, so we can get a clearer picture of what is actually happening in the UK games market.
Overall, at UK Games Journal, we use these figures, charts and sales reports to put the UK gaming market into context. Whether we are looking at what topped the charts this week or what annual sales tell us about the industry over several years, the numbers help us explain where the market has been, where it is today and how it continues to change.