505 shines in bleak August for UK retail

Retail will hope the worst is behind it as August game sales plunged to new lows.

The boxed games market did enjoy a late sales spike with Deus Ex, which reached No.2 in the Chart-Track monthly charts despite just two days on sale.

But this only highlights what a weak month August turned out to be. Just 43.9m was made at games retail last month, a drop of 19.5 per cent compared to the same period the year before. 2,251,482 games were sold, a decrease of 21 per cent year-on-year.

The No.1 game was once again Zumba Fitness. Its publisher 505 Games grew its market share to become the third biggest company for the month behind EA and Square Enix. There were two 505 titles in the Top 10, with Rugby World Cup 2011 at No.6.

The success of Zumba also made an impact on the hardware rankings. More games were sold on Wii last month than PS3, something that hasn’t happened since December last year.