Brits buying more games than music on the high street
Statistics from the Entertainment Retailers’ Association reveals that in the UK, revenue from sales of video games is topping that of music sales for the first time. Video games are now the second most valuable entertainment market at £1,719m, still trailing the DVD market at £2,164m but rapidly closing the gap.
The retail market for music – now at £1,417m – has obviously been hit hard by the growth of online music sales and presumably the nefarious practise of downloading music without paying hasn’t helped much either.
Sales of movies haven’t been so widely affected by downloads, in part because there’s not really any decent place to buy digital movies legally yet, but revenue is expected to fall further in years to come due to the fact that the price DVDs is falling all the time.
“In unit terms music is still important, but in value terms a lot less so,” ERA director general Kim Bayley said. “In years to come, games and DVD will vie to become the biggest market. “That battle will depend on what products are out and how retailers react.”
Yes, pretty soon the whole ground floor of HMV will be devoted to racks upon racks of videogames and all that ‘music’ that the kids listen to on their ‘CD players’ can take its turn at being hidden away in some dingy corner of the basement. Hah.
ECA (MCV via Kotaku)
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