GAME crisis drives market depression

The collapse of GAME took a heavy toll on the UK games retail market last month.

2.7m games were sold during March, a whopping 34 per cent drop on the 4.1m games sold during the same period in 2011.

In total, retail generated 67.7m last month, a year-on-year drop of 33.5 per cent.

For the entire first quarter, physical game sales in the UK were 30 per cent down compared with Q1 2011.

The crisis that engulfed GAME would have had a big impact on the figures. The market leading retailer fell into administration last month and was unable to source new stock for almost eight weeks.

EA’s titles were amongst those missing from GAME shelves, but the firm still dominated the March charts, with Mass Effect 3 the biggest seller, well ahead of FIFA Street at No.2, SSX at No.3 and FIFA 12 at No.4.

The publisher’s line-up accounted for almost one third of all the games sold in the UK at retail last month.

The figures are courtesy of GfK Chart-Track.