The demise of bodily video games accelerated considerably final yr within the UK, as total recreation income additionally took successful.
Physical recreation gross sales have been on a gradual decline over the previous decade, with some high-profile video games like Hellblade 2 and Alan Wake 2 having ditched boxed copies altogether.
The rising dominance of digital will also be seen with the digital-only variations of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, and whereas there was some pushback towards an all-digital future with specialist websites like Limited Run, the demise of bodily video games now feels inevitable.
This tracks with new UK gross sales information, which exhibits 2024 was a big turning level within the decline of bodily gross sales.
According to information from the Entertainment Retailers Association, which is predicated on figures from Nielsen, India, and GSD, online game income within the UK dropped 4.4% final yr, to £4.6 billion.
As reported by Chris Dring, this drop primarily stems from a collapse in bodily recreation income within the nation, with solely £324.4 million generated by gross sales of boxed video games in 2024. This is a drop of ‘almost 35%’ when in comparison with 2023.
When you evaluate these numbers with digital, the distinction is very large. In 2024, the digital market generated £4.29 billion by console, PC, cellular, and pill recreation gross sales, which was solely a 1% drop year-over-year.
Among these digital figures, PC obtain gross sales have been down 5%, console downloads have been down 15%, whereas cellular and pill gaming rose by 2.6%.
Interestingly, subscription income went up 12%, which might be as a result of a lift in subscriber numbers, or just because companies like PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass bumped up their costs over the previous yr.
Overall, this implies the online game market will place behind movie and video within the UK for the second consecutive yr, when beforehand it was once out in entrance.
The decline of bodily is greatest mirrored within the UK’s best-selling recreation for 2024, EA Sports FC 25, which bought 2.9 million copies. According to the information, 80% of the sport’s gross sales have been through digital shops.
While this paints a bleak image for the way forward for bodily video games, ERA boss Kim Bayley suggests the format will nonetheless be important shifting ahead, stating: ‘After the breakneck progress of latest years, it’s no shock that the market has slowed down, nevertheless it stays an enormous.
‘Despite the sights of digital enterprise fashions to builders, we consider bodily nonetheless has a task to play.’
Part of the issue with gross sales in 2024 is that there merely weren’t very many massive identify video games, significantly within the usually busy autumn interval. 2025 shouldn’t have that downside although, with GTA 6 and Nintendo’s subsequent console each anticipated to launch later this yr.
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