Big chill freezes UK games market

It’s usually the biggest spending period for the games industry – but the last weekend before Christmas offered no growth for the UK games retail.

According to MCV calculations based on exclusive UKIE/Chart-Track data, the UK retail market was worth 78.7m last week – a small drop from 79.6m the week previously.

That’s just a small contraction of of 2%, but it’s still a decrease nevertheless at a time when games sales tend to rise week on week.

A similar amount of games week on week were sold too. Around 3,181,764 games were sold via the UK High Street, supermarkets and mail order over the period, compared to the previous week’s 3,189,940.

Of course, as we predicted last week, the midwinter snow was the main culprit – as a flurry of frosty weather swamped the UK.

We also reported last week that the UK had to sell 313m in three weeks to match 2009’s sales figures.

That number’s now down to 234.3m – and with just two weeks’ trading to go until the final end of year figures are compiled, it’s looking like 2010 was another year of market shrinkage.