Digital omission threatening chart legitimacy

As was reported yesterday, end of year trading figures show a gaping 100m hole in the UK games retail market for 2011.

According to GfK Chart-Track data, UK games retailers sold 55.4m games during 2011, almost 12 per cent down year-on-year. In terms of revenue, UK retailers made 1.42bn from software, down 7.1 per cent on 2010’s 1.53bn.

But experts say this metric is increasingly meaningless without data from the download, browser and mobile sectors.

Geoff Heath is part of the UKIE group building the first UK digital chart. He said: I look at my MCV once a week and I see the size of the market in there, and I can’t resist a wry smile, because what’s in that number is not that big of a percentage of the market anymore.

"We have got to identify that there is a massive market out there that nobody is quantifying.”

2011’s top five games sold over 1m or more in the UK: Modern Warfare 3, FIFA 12, Battlefield 3, Skyrim and Zumba Fitness.