Software Sales Monitor: Market shrinks by a third

It wasn’t a great week for UK games retail, with the market shrinking by a third. 14m was generated from game sales overall which is almost 7m less than last week’s 20.9m

With no new big releases hitting shelves for the week ending January 14th, the number of units sold stumbled 32 per cent. Just 662,463 games were shifted, down from the 977,703 copies sold the week prior.

A?handful of fitness titles performed well at retail, however. Ubisoft’s Your Shape:?Fitness Evolved 2012 made its Top 40 chart debut at No.12 after seeing sales more than double, while 505’s Zumba Fitness 2 rose to No.7. Nintendo’s Wii Fit leapt up seven places to No.20.

You can expect it to be another tough week for retailers as no new major console games arrive today (Friday, January 20th). Next week, however, Resident Evil: Revelations arrives on 3DS, and a stack of anticipated titles follow in February.