Worst August in 19 years for UK games retailers

Sales of physical games in the UK generated just 22.5m last month, the lowest figure for an August since the mid-1990s.

It is the 14th worst month in UK games industry history – 12 of which took place during 1996 and 1997. The only month in recent memory to reach lower than 22m was July 2013.

This is GfK Chart-Track figures, which does not factor in digital sales of games due to the industry’s reluctance to share data around download games. Therefore this number does not include the sales of games such as Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, Volume, Beyond Eyes, Her Story and Rocket League.

Three of those games were made in Britain, and it was actually a strong month for UK-made games overall. There were six boxed British games in the Chart-Track Top Ten, LEGO Jurassic World (No.1), Batman: Arkham Knight (No.2), Grand Theft Auto V (No.3), Rare Replay (No.5), Minecraft: Xbox Edition (No.9) and F1 2015 (No.10).