Software Sales Monitor: Market drops to £12.1m

The steady drop in market value and unit sales continued last week, with UK games retail shifting nine per cent fewer games week-on-week.

EA held the lion’s share of the market last week with nine games in the Top 40. The latest release in its long-running SSX snowboarding franchise finally hit shelves after a five-year hiatus and went straight to No.1, though this wasn’t enough to reverse the weekly market decline.

Nintendo’s new release Mario Party 9 was the third best-selling game of the week ahead of Uncharted: Golden Abyss on PS Vita, which saw a 71 per cent sales drop. FIFA?12 took No.2.

Overall the UK games retail market generated 12.1m from sales of gaming products last week – a nine per cent drop from 13.3m. Just over half a million game units were sold, which was also nine per cent fewer than the previous week’s 555,632.

EA continues its string of big releases with Mass Effect 3 and The Sims 3: Showtime on sale today (Friday, March 9th), although those titles are not being stocked by GAME and Gamestation. Street Fighter X Tekken also hits shelves today, but again not in GAME.