HMV backing away from video games

The competition from supermarkets and online retailers has lead HMV to admit that it is reconsidering its interest in the video games market.

Though the retailer’s market share remained static for both music and DVDa, its gaming market share fell by 16 per cent over Christmas. Games now account for 20 per cent of HMV’s sales.

"I think one of the things we will do is look at what per cent of games should make up as part of the mix,” chief executive Simon Fox told The Telegraph.

The likeliest move, Fox added, was that HMV will in future just focus on triple-A new releases and not back-catalogue titles. What that means for its Re/play trade-in offer remains to be seen.

And what HMV cuts back in games it’s likely to re-allocate to technology. Tech sales were up 51 per cent at stores open for a year or more over Christmas, with headphone unit sales hitting 0.5m over the festive period.

The chain recently refitted 144 stores with a more tech-centric design.