Year on year, the games market has been in somewhat of a decline with a lower demand for consoles such as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. After an initial surge in sales from their 2013 release, it has actually taken a further 2 years, to December 2015, for any discernable improvement in people buying the consoles and accompanying games, to be registered.
Kantar Wordpanel recently released figures which show that although the games market still had a shortfall leading up to Christmas – when compared with other physical entertainment forms it actually performed relatively well. Actual high street stores took 68% of the market share of sales – an increase of 6% since 2014.
Kantar spokesperson Fiona Keenan commented that, “It’s really only in the final quarter of 2015 that this has resulted in significant gains for both the market and retailers, as gamers increase their spending. Gifting of these products has also jumped as a result, up by just over 40% on last year”
She also commented that GAME had managed to hit its highest entertainment market share in five years with Tesco and Argos both achieving peak shares in the same calendar period.
It looks like Amazon have lost out too, certainly in terms of the amounts that gamers have spent with the online retailer in terms of console buying. It’s been reported that their overall share of the games market has dropped by another 3% in the last trading quarter of 2015, to 20.7%. They’ve maintained their sales in terms of other music and entertainments, however.
The most interesting aspect of the story is that had it not been for singer Adele, video games and consoles would have accounted for the highest percentage of sales on the physical market this year!
The singer, who released her much feted comeback album “25” just a few months ago came top of the physical entertainment market sales list, outselling every other title over the festive shopping period.
Adele’s album release is an interesting one, as it has so far been unavailable on any of the music streaming services to download, which has actually forced people to go out and support their high street, or buy online from one of the major retailers stocking it. Experts believe this is the one factor that made her album so successful and the major reason it stopped video games and consoles being the number one purchase for festive shoppers in 2015.
She might not be as popular among gamers now, but we’ll let her off the hook!
