Record Breaking Sales For Games (UK)

The UK interactive entertainment software market hit a new all time high in 2006, according to ELSPA (Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) as it reveals annual performance figures today.

2006 was an exciting year for the industry with a growth in sales, the industry enjoyed a 7% increase on units sold from the previous year taking the total to a whopping 65.1 million units sold. ELSPA happily announces these record sales of interactive entertainment software across all formats totalling £1.36 billion, an increase of over 1% per cent over 2005’s record figures.

Paul Jackson, Director General of ELSPA, said: "We are thrilled to see the industry growing and software sales continuing to rise. With the new generation consoles and new handhelds there are some amazing titles out there and consumers are continuing to enjoy them. There are new and exciting games available and more and more family orientated and mentally stimulating titles to grasp and hold the interest of all ages. This is also a testament to the industry and it will continue to gain momentum.”

With popularity of the handhelds on the market, the PSP and the DS, and the next generation consoles titles it is fantastic to see that PC software sales are also continuing to increase. Seeing PC titles have had their best year in ever in 2006 with a huge 7% increase since the previous year.

Paul Jackson continued: “Although there are new consoles and handhelds for gamers its is great to see that the PC market is doing so well.”

The most popular console software was the PS2, followed by the Xbox 360, the Xbox, Wii and GameCube followed.

2006 was the year of the handheld too with the Nintendo DS and Sony’s PSP software coming in only behind PS2 software, with the DS slightly outdoing the PSP.

The top ten games for 2006:


1 FIFA 07 (GBA, DS, X360, Xb, GC, PS2, PSP, PC)
2 Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (DS, PSP, X360, PS2, PC)
3 Need For Speed: Carbon (DS, GBA, GC, PS2, PSP, X360, Xb, PC, Wii)
4 Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (PSP, PS2)
5 Lego Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy (DS, GBA, GC, PC, PS2, PSP, Xb)
6 The Sims 2: Pets (PC)
7 Cars (DS, GBA, GC, PC, PS2, PSP, Xb, X360, Wii
8 Tomb Raider Legend (PC, PS2, X360, Xb, PSP, DS, GBA, GC)
9 The Sims 2 (PC, DS, GBA, GC, PS2, Xb, Mob, PSP)
10 WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2007 (PS2, X360, PSP,)

and sony losing the battle on firmware being hacked and iso`s etc YEAH! MY ASS THEY STILL MAKE ENOUGH MONEY LOL think about it if more ppl here about what psp can do when downgraded the more ppl will want to buy a psp and the ppl who dont and just buy games well yeah! they sell enough umd`s

Wait... all the FIFA 2007 are lumped together, So the GBA version of the game is the same as the 360 version? That hardly seems fair to me since each version is on the whole substantially different between formats. The same goes for most of the others on the list.

I think the only definitive thing you can say about that list is that most people have bad taste in games.

I also don't believe multiplatform games should be counted like that. All of the console and platform games (apart from GTA:LCS) are completely different games with the same name; grouping them is stupid.