It’s hard to argue that 2007 has been a great year for gaming. As the GN staff works on our year-end awards, we are finding this to be more and more apparent. The games released this year have been great, and that level of quality has translated into huge numbers on the sales end of things – especially in the UK.
Through the first 50 weeks of 2007, 78 million software units have been sold in the UK, up 16.6 percent from last year. That increase is equivalent to 25.3 percent by monetary value, and in the third quarter alone, sales have risen to GBP 332.6 million, up GBP 99.1 million from 2006.
Said Paul Jackson of the Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association:
"2007 has been a fantastic year for our industry as all the latest generation of consoles and handheld devices have become fully established. Interactive entertainment is now truly mass market, and this is just the beginning of a period of real sustained growth."
This growth is mostly thanks to the console market, which now accounts to 79 percent of the software revenues and 75 percent of total software units in the region.
