Trade enjoys 8th biggest sales week in UK history

GfK Chart-Track director, Dorian Bloch, has revealed to GamesIndustry.biz that last week was the eight biggest sales week in terms of value in the UK's videogames history - and that the company fully expects every week between now and Christmas to increase further.

The news will come as a tonic to those wondering whether or not the games industry can hold off the effects of recession over the Holiday period, with week 46 - the seven days ending November 15 - also yielding the tenth highest unit sales on record as well.

"The fanfare's been going on for the last three weeks - everyone's been gearing up for week 46, and we've put 101 different SKUs on our system for the week," explained Bloch. "I'm not sure if that's the most we've ever put on our system, but it's extremely close to being the biggest week in terms of the number of products we've put on our system.

"It's not the biggest sales week - we haven't gotten to Christmas yet, but it was a big week. With all of those titles, week 46 ended up being the tenth biggest week ever in terms of units, and the eighth biggest week ever in terms of value generated.

"We're still a long way from the peak - from now on we expect sales to go up in units and value every week. So next week, week 48, 49, 50 and 51 - it should increase week on week.

However, he did add that because of the number of high profile releases last week it was conceivable that week 47 might blip down slightly before the real Christmas rush kicks in.

"The only proviso is that because we've had such an oddity with this week having so many huge releases, it's possible the market might dip slightly next week - simply because everyone's gone out and bought maybe one or two games, they've spent GBP 80, GBP 100 and that's quite a lot of money to spend week in, week out."

Additionally last week saw a massive week for PC sales, with two of the top four in the all formats chart being PC-only titles - while the top five titles in the PC chart accounted for a whopping 76 per cent of all PC game sales over the week.

"In terms of PC sales, if you look at the top five PC games, it's quite an impressive number - they accounted for 76 per cent of all PC games sold, which just goes to show how skewed it is towards big hitters.

"That's very, very high - positions one, two and three were all new releases, Lich King, Football Manager, Call of Duty. The number one was a record-breaker, number two was a huge seller, and number three was a pretty good seller."

The week's overall number one was Call of Duty: World at War, for which PC sales only made up 14 per cent of the overall sales total. The Xbox 360 won that particular format war in the UK, accounting for 55 per cent, while the PlayStation 3 was responsible for the remaining 31 per cent.