UK boxed games market plunges 30% in January

January was a grim month for UK games retail, with sales down 30 per cent year-on-year.

There was a dearth of new releases last month – by comparison LittleBigPlanet 2 and Dead Space 2 were released in January 2011.

In total 2,781,786 games were sold last month, down 27.7 per cent compared to the same period in 2011. Revenue was down 30 per cent to 59.2m.

FIFA 12 was the No.1 game of the month, followed by Battlefield 3 at No.2 and Modern Warfare 3 at No.3. The only charting new game was Resident Evil: Revelations at No. 45.

The success of FIFA and Battlefield meant that EA reclaimed its place as the No.1 publisher, knocking Ubisoft down to No.2.