Games Have Best Year Ever in UK
New consoles and surging portables help the industry to its best year yet.
It's becoming something of a tradition for the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association to tout the seemingly unending growth of the industry in the UK every January. Each year the trade body that oversees the games industry reports back with bigger and bigger numbers, and it was no different this year.
PSP was big in '06, but not as big as DSELSPA said on Thursday that customers bought 65.1 million games in 2006, bringing in £1.36 billion for the year. That's an increase of 7 per cent in the number of games sold.
And while FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer were the most popular games again, it was the rising interest in portable systems that spurred the year on. The DS actually finished 2006 as the most popular platform, selling twice as much as the PSP.
It wasn't quite as simple for the Xbox 360, which was up against the omnipresent PlayStation 2. The Xbox 360 ended the year in fourth place in the hardware race, and none of its exclusive titles managed a Top 10 spot, despite a late surge by Gears of War.
Below are the Top 10 games in the UK for the full year:
- FIFA 07 (EA)
- Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (Konami)
- Need For Speed: Carbon (EA)
- Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (Rockstar)
- Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (LucasArts)
- The Sims 2: Pets (EA)
- Cars (THQ)
- Tomb Raider: Legend (Eidos)
- The Sims 2 (EA)
- WWE SmackDown Vs Raw 2007 (THQ)
Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo
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