Annual UK game sales topped £4 billion for the first time in 2020

UK video game software revenues exceeded £4 billion for the first time in 2020, driven by booming digital sales.

Annual game sales totalled £4.2 billion, up 14.5% compared to 2019, when sales declined for the first time since 2012.

Digital game sales rose 16.3% last year to reach £3.6 billion – more than the total generated by the entire video market (£3.2 billion) and over twice as much as the music market (£1.6 billion).

Having declined by 21.7% in 2019, physical game sales returned to growth in 2020 with revenues up 4.6% to £598.5 million, according to data released on Friday by the Entertainment Retailers Association.

UPDATE: Annual UK game sales actually hit £4.34 billion in 2020, according to revised figures from the Entertainment Retailers Association.

FIFA 21 was the best-selling game of last year with almost 2.2 million sales, ahead of fellow 2020 release Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Grand Theft Auto V, which first launched way back in September 2013.

Grand Theft Auto V was the UK’s best-selling physical game of the 2010s, ahead of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Minecraft.

On the hardware front, Nintendo Switch sold about as many units in the UK last year as the PS5, PS4, Xbox Series S/X and Xbox One combined, according to GamesIndustry.biz head Christopher Dring.

Further reading

Assassin’s Creed is the UK’s Christmas No.1 game for the first time ever

Call of Duty and FIFA denied Christmas top spot for only the third time in 15 years