Happy New Year: January in numbers

January is always a quiet time of the year – this year more so than normal with only a handful of new releases.

That didn’t stop a reasonable sum of money being generated by software. 58.5m was made through game sales, which is an impressive 24 per cent rise over the same period last year.

2.2m games were sold in this time, a five per cent increase on January 2013. The disparity between the rise in sales and revenue is due to the rising price of video games as a result of the new consoles and a drop in budget releases.

FIFA 14 tops the monthly charts, despite seeing a 79 per cent decline in month-on-month sales. EA’s football title spent most of this month at the top of the All Formats charts. It was also the best-selling game on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PlayStation 3 during the period.

Though it was bundled with the Xbox One, it saw better sales on the PlayStation 4 during the period.

The rest of the Top Five features the usual suspects – Activision’s Call of Duty:Ghosts and Battlefield 4 from EA continue to perform well, as does Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Warner Bros’ LEGO Marvel Super Heroes remains in the Top Five – likely due to its wide marketing campaign.

No new releases make it into the charts this month. The biggest new title was Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, which was released after the sales period.

Below are the charts for January: