UK has ‘best week ever’ for video games sales

Moneys

The launches of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Kinect for the Xbox 360 have helped the UK experience its biggest week of all time for game sales.

Call of Duty: Black Ops topped the UK chart with 1.4 million sales, breaking a number of UK records in the process. Meanwhile the release of Kinect and its 11 launch titles also contributed to the rise in sales.

Week 45 of 2010 has therefore become the biggest grossing week of all time for video games in the UK, with an estimated total of almost £114 million. The previous record holding week for games sales was the final week of 2008 which grossed £107.6 million.

Michael Rawlinson, Director General of video games trade body UKIE said:

“The video games and interactive entertainment industry has already seen a great start to quarter 4 2010 and the success of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Microsoft’s Kinect adds to this. The positive sales figures of titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops, new hardware launches like Kinect, the emergence of casual/mobile games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope and social networking games such as Farmville show that video games and other forms of interactive entertainment continue to be played by more people than ever – with 1 in 3 people in the UK now being gamers.”

“Given the huge audiences for games on all formats, 2010 has been a year of unprecedented activity and focus. And with more video games than ever before being played, on an ever growing range of games consoles, PCs, mobile phones, mobile devices and internet enabled TVs, the industry has widened beyond all expectations and will continue to expand exponentially in 2011.”

So Train2Game, what are your thoughts on this weeks’ boom in video games sales? Does it bode well for the game development industry as a whole? Does this news make you feel even more confident about your decision to pursue a job in the games industry?

As usual, you can leave your thoughts here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum

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