Almost 90% of games sold in UK in 2022 were digital – ERA

According to a trade organisation, nearly nine out of every ten video games sold in the UK in 2022 will be sold digitally.

89.5% of games sold, according to the Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA), were digital downloads, with 10.5% being actual physical copies.

Digitally sold smartphone apps made up about 30% of the total sales.

In 2022, the UK gaming business generated £4.7 billion in total sales, more than the industries of cinema, television, and music combined.

According to the statistics, downloading games onto a console or computer is significantly more common for gamers than waiting for a delivery or visiting a store.

Gaming is the “often-unheralded leader” of the entertainment sector, according to ERA CEO Kim Bayley.

Its scale is tremendous, and in terms of innovation and excitement, it continues to set the pace for the entire entertainment sector, she added, even though growth at 2.3% was lower than that of video or music.

The numbers in the game industry are approximations, in contrast to the music industry, where the Official Chart Company measures the precise number of digital song sales.

Digital storefronts owned by game heavyweights like PlayStation and Valve are exempt from publishing sales data, but ERA estimates offered by market-research firm Omdia were “the industry baseline,” according to Ms. Bayley.

“It was much easier to track the market in the old days, when there were pretty much only tangible console games and PC CDs,” she said.

These days, the market is much more fragmented, and the new digital players occasionally refuse to directly share their sales data. As a result, estimates are used.

“How the numbers are viewed and treated is the real test of the pudding.”