UK SOFTWARE SALES MONITOR Your weekly guide to the UK games software market
WEEKLY MARKET VALUE:
£8.66m No. 1
Week ending July 21st, 2012 8 £9.9m 4
484,005 units
£8.96m 410,429 units
£8.66m 408,460 units
12 Total UK Software Sales Source: UKIE/Chart-Track and Intent Media
LOOK WHO’S TALKING
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Another dip for the UK’s weekly software sales, but not as severe as last week’s – although losing £300,000 in revenue isn’t pleasant, regardless. This week’s £8.66m is perilously close to May’s all-time-low of £8.5m.
Unit sales were only down by 2,000 units, however, which shows the value decrease came thanks to sales of price-reduced games. Ghost Reconand other Top 10 titles were on offer this week.
Week Ending July 7th
Week Ending July 14th
Some respite may come this weekend with the release of 3DS XL. The new large-screened 3DS XL lands in stores today (Friday, July 27th), along with two new format-exclusive games from Nintendo, New Art Academy and Freakyforms Deluxe.
Week Ending July 21st
But that’s it in terms of major releases for the summer, until New Super Mario Bros 2on August 17th. Until then, hopefully LEGO Batmanand summer sales can tide you over.
“Investors are having a hard time understanding where growth in the industry is. They’re reading NPD, which is just the disc.”
EA head honcho John Riccitiello probably wants a digital chart
WHO ARE THE BIGGEST GAMES ADVERTISERS ON TV?
Generation Media looks at who has had the biggest impact in TV advertising this year.
2012 COMMERCIAL EQUIVALENT IMPACTS BY ADVERTISER
Nintendo is undoubtedly king of games and consoles TV advertising in the UK so far this year. With over 1m equivalent commercial impacts, it has controlled over a quarter of all ad pressure. 26.5 per cent of all TV transmissions for games and consoles broadcast this year have been for a Nintendo product. Nintendo’s dominance stems not from one substantial launch, but from supporting over 15 moderately sized campaigns thus far in 2012. Second is Microsoft, whose Kinect motion controller has been the main ingredient of its marketing mix in 2012. Electronic Arts is third on the list – as with Nintendo this is due to moderate support behind a number of campaigns. Conversely, whilst Sony’s PS Vita console has had more impacts than any other product, few other products have been supported, putting Sony in fourth place.
49.7 per cent of all commercial impacts were by Nintendo, Microsoft
and EA; so virtually half of the TV games and consoles ad views in 2012 were for a product marketed by one of the Top Three publishers. The Top Ten games and consoles advertisers in the UK have made up 83 per cent of all equivalent commercial impacts in 2012. This leaves 21 advertisers sharing the remaining 17 per cent of equivalent impacts – although there are still big names such as Rockstar Games and Bethesda in this chasing pack.