PS4 and Xbox One shine but physical gaming sales drop to £2.1bn in 2015

PS4 and Xbox One UK game sales shot up by over 50 per cent in 2015.

GfK’s latest stats reveal significant growth for the new consoles. However, the overall UK physical games market is down by eight per cent, dropping from 2.294bn in 2014 to 2.1bn last year. That number includes all game, console and accessory sales.

The drop in performance is almost entirely down to falling hardware sales. PS4 and Xbox One were also sold for a lower price, impacting the revenue figures.

Retail reports say that there are now around 5.5m gamers in the UK that own either a PS4 or Xbox One.

Xbox One software unit sales rose 51.4 per cent in 2015 year-on-year (and 38.2 per cent in revenue). PS4 game sales increased by 53.4 per cent (40.2 per cent in revenue).

Four boxed games sold over 1m units in 2015 – FIFA 16, Call of Duty: Black Ops III, Fallout 4 and Star Wars Battlefront. And another practically sold a million – GTA V shifted 999,000 units in boxes.

There was also huge growth for accessories, with 495.6m (a 15 per cent increase) made from toys-to-life products, controllers, headsets and points cards.

It was a major 12 months for Warner Bros, too. The firm was the third biggest publisher last year – in terms of units and value – thanks to the success of its LEGO titles, as well as Batman: Arkham Knight.