UK boxed game sales spike over Easter

UK games retailers enjoyed its busiest weekend yet last week, thanks to BioShock and Tomb Raider.
The two blockbuster releases of the last month dominated the Chart-Track Top 40 last week, with BioShock Infinite becoming the fastest selling game in the series to date.

743,045 games were sold in the UK last week, generating £20.26m in revenue. A rise of 47 per cent week-on-week. This number is for boxed video games only, GfK Chart-Track currently does not track digital game sales.

It was also one of the busiest release weeks for some time, with Luigi’s Mansion 2 (No.5 in the charts), Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel (No.6), Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 (No.8), LEGO City Undercover (No.13) and Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (No.31) joining BioShock: Infinite on the shelves.

It marked an end to a solid March for the trade, following a disappointing start to the year. However, with a lack of new software due over the next two months, game sales are expected to slip again before the end-of-year rush.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/uk-boxed-game-sales-spike-over-easter/0113674

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http://www.vg247.com/2012/03/27/minecraft-creator-blames-game-failure-on-digital-distribution/
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REVISION: Games Industry by numbers

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Celebrating the British Games Industry

The video games industry is the most profitable entertainment industry that exists, outstripping cinema, DVD and music in terms of profit accumulated and units sold, and this has been the case for a while, particularly in Britain. So why is the British games industry constantly overlooked by the mainstream press? When a British film makes a few hundred million at the box office or wins an Oscar then it is front page news but when a British games company, Rockstar, makes a game that generates more than $1 billion, GTA IV, this news is given a few inches in the technology columns of a Sunday supplement. Why is this?