UK games retail generated £9.7m last week

The market fell below the 10m mark for the first time this year during the week ending April 21st.

Unit sales dipped 17 per cent to 422,280. This was due to another week with few new releases hitting shelves. In fact, The Witcher 2 was the only new title to enter the Top 40.

Namco Bandai’s new Xbox 360 release stormed to the top of the games charts last week. It sold around twice as many copies as second-place FIFA Street, but it wasn’t enough to prevent UK games retail tumbling to 9.7m in terms of value.

You can expect another quiet week around the corner. Prototype 2 went on sale last Tuesday (April, 24th), while just a handful of small titles hit shelves today (Friday, April 27th). This mirrors the week prior, where The Witcher 2 went on sale on Tuesday, April 17th.

EA continued to dominate the charts, with five games in the Top Ten. However, like last week, sales of all these were down, as were the majority of games in the Top 40. Only a handful of titles saw sales rise slightly – including F1 2012, The Sims 3 and Football Manager 2012.