Easter bank holiday boom

It may have been one of the hottest Easters on record, but UK games retailers enjoyed a red hot weekend of sales last week.

Some 22.4 million was made over the course of the Easter week, marking an increase of 43 per cent over the 15.8m generated a week before.

Almost 950,000 games were sold last week, the third highest number of the year so far.

It put to rest retail fears that sales would dry up as consumers headed to the beach for the warmest weekend of the year yet.

Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat were the biggest sellers of the week, the former being developer Valve’s first UK No.1. Meanwhile, Codemasters’ Operation Flashpoint: Red River debuted at No.6.

However, it wasn’t just new software that drove the market last week, with many price promotions on the High Street.

Retail will be hoping for a repeat performance during this week’s four-day weekend for the Royal Wedding, with Sega’s Virtua Tennis 4 the week’s big new release.