UK games market 2023: Digital software sales: Console £2.48b, PC £684m | Hardware sales: console +12% PC -11%

[Puff]

The figures​

• UK games consumer market value: £7.82 billion (+4.4% year-on-year)
• Software sales: £5.18 billion (+4.1% year-on-year)
• Hardware sales: £2.22 billion (+2.1% year-on-year)
• Revenue from film, TV, and soundtracks based on game IPs: £124 million

The highlights​

While overall game sales were up in the UK in 2023, boxed sales have continued their decline and were down 5% to £495 million compared to 2022. Looking at digital sales more precisely, digital console software sales were up 5.6% to £2.48 billion, and digital PC software sales increased 4.5% year-on-year to £684 million. Mobile sales were also up, reaching £1.52 billion following a 4.5% growth.

When it comes to hardware sales, consoles had a particularly strong year, with sales increasing 12% compared to 2022 to £951 million. PC, on the other hand, showed quite a decline, with sales decreasing 11% year-on-year, falling to £673 million.

Omdia senior analyst James McWhirter gave a bit more detail: "Digital spend within the UK's console market returned to growth in 2023 as PlayStation 5 hardware sales volumes hit their stride, while Nintendo Switch remained remarkably resilient as a bumper lineup of first party software propped up active users and spend on the now seven-year-old platform."

He also noted the success of games including Diablo 4, Hogwarts Legacy, Spider-Man 2, Super Mario Bros Wonder, Tears of the Kingdom, EA Sports FC 24, and Baldur's Gate 3, which all contributed to the health of the market.

Dorian Block, from data firm GfK Entertainment, added that the decline in boxed software sales was actually "better than expected," due to strong releases and the "Zelda effect" on Switch. He added that PS4/PS5 boxed sales overtook Switch sales in 2023 in the UK.

"Total sales achieved a higher overall [average selling price] than any other year on record (£36 overall)," he continued, still talking about boxed sales. "This was achieved by the fact that there were 17 major titles in 2023 that remained above £50 over the entire year (accounting for 34% of 2023 revenue), compared to just 8 titles in 2022 (accounting for 21% of 2022 revenue)."

Meanwhile, accessories sales grew 3% to £402 million, and VR hardware sales increased 11% to £194 million.

UKIE's report included revenue coming from digital film and TV based on video game properties for the first time, creating a new vertical the trade body called the "broader game culture sector," including toys, merchandise, books, magazines, film, TV, soundtracks, events, and streaming content. This sector saw a revenue of £418 million in 2023 in the UK.

Revenue from games soundtrack as well as TV and film adaptations reached £124 million in 2023, while events revenue surged 140% to £10.3 million – a success UKIE attributed to events including Pokémon Go Fest and Apex Legends Global Series.

UKIE CEO Nick Poole, commented: "Once again, the report showcases the vitality of interactive entertainment in the UK in the face of significant challenges."

He acknowledged both this "positive trajectory" but also the layoffs affecting the industry, and reiterated UKIE's commitment to support the UK games industry.

He added: "The video game industry continues to evolve rapidly, presenting both challenges and opportunities. As we continue to see changing patterns of consumer behaviour in how people buy and play games, these figures give us real confidence that games will continue to pioneer tomorrow's frontiers in entertainment, learning and participation."

Source 1
Source 2

 

[J_Paganel]

Sony: "great dynamics, quickly port SM2, TLOU2, Tsushima, and everything we have on torre... PC!"

 

[Johnic]

LOL!

So much for PC being the future. Those 250 000 sales for Horizon sure helped grow that PC market...

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Wonder how PCMR and Steam fanboys are gonna try spinning this one ?....

 

[Yurinka]

Sony: "great dynamics, quickly port SM2, TLOU2, Tsushima, and everything we have on torre... PC!"

LOL!

So much for PC being the future. Those 250 000 sales for Horizon sure helped grow that PC market...

Wonder how PCMR and Steam fanboys are gonna try spinning this one ?....

Sony already has UK, and wants to expand in Asian countries like China, Korea or India where -unlike UK- they mostly play on PC and specially mobile. Almost half of the worldwide game revenue is made in Asia.

UK is always a top 1 or top 2 EU market, but UK represents a tiny small percentage (normally 3-4%) of the global gaming revenue. Newzoo data:

PC and specially mobile are also bigger markets than PS in a global scale (PC is relatively similar to the console market when not counting game subs, but PS represents slightly under half of the revenue share of the console market), with a relatively low overlap with PS according to a couple studies about this.

So PC and mobile are great opportunity for them to grow. Sony is growing fast every year on PC, and becoming one of the top PC publishers. In FY22 was top 20 publisher in Steam, I bet this FY23 they'll be way higher in the ranking and specially in FY24 I think they'll be in one of the highest positions.

 

[Jim Ryan]

Pc has no power here.

 

[Jim Ryan]

Sony already has UK, and wants to expand in Asian countries like China, Korea or India where -unlike UK- they mostly play on PC and specially mobile. Almost half of the worldwide game revenue is made in Asia.

UK is always a top 1 or top 2 EU market, but UK represents a small percentage of the global gaming revenue and userbase. Newzoo data:

PC and specially mobile are also bigger markets than PS in a global scale (PC is similar to the console market but PS represents slightly under half of the revenue share of the console market), with a relatively low overlap with PS according to a couple studies about this.

So PC and mobile are great opportunity for them to grow.

Newzoo are a business that sells pc parts, making them conflicted and biased as a source.

Mobile games and players are very different to high end games that require a superior level of skill.

Why not grow PlayStation in those territories than grow competitors platforms?

What you say makes no sense for sony, they didn't just give up on console because Nintendo had captured most of the market back in 1995.

Same logic applies here... You don't just give it all away

 

[Yurinka]

Newzoo are a business that sells pc parts, making them conflicted and biased as a source.

Mobile games and players are very different to high end games that require a superior level of skill.

Why not grow PlayStation in those territories than grow competitors platforms?

What you say makes no sense for sony, they didn't just give up on console because Nintendo had captured most of the market back in 1995.

Same logic applies here... You don't just give it all away

Newzoo aren't the same ones saying what I quoted, the rest of the market analysis firms, the game publisher country associations and the main game publishers say the same I said.

Regarding mobile, Sony and SIE have also been working on it since some years ago, and partenered with many of the main mobile gaming publishers and devs in Asia to help them bring their SIE IPs to mobile. But big mobile games also take several years to be made, so they'll need some time to release them.

Growing in PC and growing in mobile doesn't mean they can't grow PS too. They are also growing PS both worldwide and in these countries. For the PS5 launch window China became the top 6 country when it was the top 11 country for the same launch window in case of PS4. But for several reasons the growth consoles can have in some of these Asian (+ Latin America) countries is limited compared to the growth they can have expanding to mobile and PC.

What I say makes total sense for Sony and the rest of the main game publishers. This is the reason of why all of them have been expanding to PC (with the exception of Nintendo) and mobile, and particularly making efforts to grow in these regions.

They are business people who care about making more revenue, more profit and to reach more players expanding their market. And need to grow them to continue funding many superexpensive AAA projects. They aren't blind, childish, tribalistic fanboys who cry when a 1st party game gets released on other platform and made up PS doom and gloom fanfic stories when basically all metrics say PS is better than ever and growing.

 

[Dabaus]

Going over the Data and it looks like PC makes up about 10 percent of sales. PC is extremely over rated save for a few extreme cases like palworld and helldivers 2.

Starfield sold almost exactly the same as FF16. Funny how one franchises seemingly dead and the publisher should completely give up on it but the other ones the game of the generation.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Sony already has UK, and wants to expand in Asian countries like China, Korea or India where -unlike UK- they mostly play on PC and specially mobile. Almost half of the worldwide game revenue is made in Asia.

UK is always a top 1 or top 2 EU market, but UK represents a tiny small percentage (normally 3-4%) of the global gaming revenue. Newzoo data:

PC and specially mobile are also bigger markets than PS in a global scale (PC is relatively similar to the console market when not counting game subs, but PS represents slightly under half of the revenue share of the console market), with a relatively low overlap with PS according to a couple studies about this.

So PC and mobile are great opportunity for them to grow. Sony is growing fast every year on PC, and becoming one of the top PC publishers. In FY22 was top 20 publisher in Steam, I bet this FY23 they'll be way higher in the ranking and specially in FY24 I think they'll be in one of the highest positions.

You literally just fell for the bait SMDH ....

 

[Gods&Monsters]

So much growth in the console market and yet we were told it's not growing and that market is doomed. Even a representative from NPD was spreading that nonsense

PC declined a lot with Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield and they were supposed to be the games of the forever

 

[mckmas8808]

So much growth in the console market and yet we were told it's not growing and that market is doomed. Even a representative from NPD was spreading that nonsense

PC declined a lot with Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield and they were supposed to be the games of the forever

Makes you wonder who is behind all this FUD.

 

[Yurinka]

Makes you wonder who is behind all this FUD.

Market researchers like the Circana/NPD/etc. share market data of the markets they cover. Data properly researched, in their case the data reported by the retailes, platform holders and publishers to them.

If some fanboy gets butthurted by the market data because doesn't match their tastes or gaming flatearther theories that go against reality isn't NPD/etc.'s fault.

 

[Danja1187]

I wonder if Totoki will continue to ignore the data while bullying and gaslighting the PlayStation department into feeling like they are a financial failure.. while they continue to prop up a dying platform like PC with little to no returns

 

[ethomaz]

Excluding Asia outside Japan everywhere PlayStation games sales are ahead PC game sales.

And Asia outside Japan is more a political issue than actual market wishes.

 

[arvfab]

Excluding Asia outside Japan everywhere PlayStation games sales are ahead PC game sales.

And Asia outside Japan is more a political issue than actual market wishes.

Psssst don't use logic around here, you will be brand marked as tribalist and/or butthurt fanboy.

 

[ethomaz]

Market researchers like the Circana/NPD/etc. share market data of the markets they cover. Data properly researched, in their case the data reported by the retailes, platform holders and publishers to them.

If some fanboy gets butthurted by the market data because doesn't match their tastes or gaming flatearther theories that go against reality isn't NPD/etc.'s fault.

The take from NPD Matt is really biased.
Because one platform (Xbox) dropped the overall games sales he claims “console market is not growing”.

But that is hardly the truth… PlayStation and Nintendo are having each NPD game sales increase in records (not so much Switch now because it is needs a sucessor asap).

So you have PS +15%, Nintendo +5% but due Xbox being -60% the overall console market looks like -2%… Sony and Nintendo can’t be blamed for of of the players having killed their platform.

I explained it to Matt and he made like he didn’t understand

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Market researchers like the Circana/NPD/etc. share market data of the markets they cover. Data properly researched, in their case the data reported by the retailes, platform holders and publishers to them.

If some fanboy gets butthurted by the market data because doesn't match their tastes or gaming flatearther theories that go against reality isn't NPD/etc.'s fault.

So you're just gonna ignore that the console market grew and the PC market shrunk in UK, huh? You know, with the data directly conveyed in this report?

I almost wonder if you would've also co-signed analyst takes back in 2012 calling for the death of consoles thanks to mobile ...

What I'm getting at is this: these analysts are not infallible. You, however, seem to think they're always right. And, well, that ends up making you look wrong a lot of the time on these types of topics (IMHO).

 

[Yurinka]

The take from NPD Matt is really biased.
Because one platform (Xbox) dropped the overall games sales he claims “console market is not growing”.

But that is hardly the truth… PlayStation and Nintendo are having each NPD game sales increase in records (not so much Switch now because it is needs a sucessor asap).

So you have PS +15%, Nintendo +5% but due Xbox being -60% the overall console market looks like -2%… Sony and Nintendo can’t be blamed for of of the players having killed their platform.

I explained it to Matt and he made like he didn’t understand

When he says "console market isn't growing" means "Xbox+PS+Switch market isn't growing".

Maybe compared to previous year or previous month, maybe related to hardware, maybe related to game sales in retail, maybe in game sales in retail+digital, maybe adding to game sales addons or not, maybe adding -I assume not in case of NPD- game subs.

PS or Switch maybe grew in other countries but didn't grow there. Or maybe they did grew but Xbox decreased way more, resulting on a decrease on the total console hardware or console software sales/revenue/etc.

These researchers periodically report several things like user spent in several of these things, like totals in software or hardware. Depending on the case, sometimes specifing specifics of each console, sometimes don't.

 

[Nhomnhom]

LOL!

So much for PC being the future. Those 250 000 sales for Horizon sure helped grow that PC market...

With little research I was able to find out that on a single public torrent tracker the game has been download over 50k times.

Sony single player PC ports at this point are pretty much a charity work for pirates and PC hardware manufactures.