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UK gaming market could eclipse Japan's in '09

by Dustin Burg on Jan 28th 2009 6:27PM

In all its infinite wisdom, MCV is predicting that the UK video game market will overtake the Japanese market sometime in 2009. Oh really? As far as having proof to back up its prediction, MCV supplies hard facts and some pro-UK mathematical sales figures.

According to its research, the Japanese market is worth £520,000, but has been steadily declining by about 15% year-on-year. Not good. By comparison, the UK market has been flourishing, growing by 18.5% year-on-year and is expected to reach a 2009 market value of £4.77 billion. Japan's 2009 market is on target to reach a "meh"-inducing £3.86 billion. Knowing this, if Japan were to take on the UK in a no-holds-barred, industry smackdown event of global proportions, we'd totally pay-per-view it.

Source

Tags: industry, japan, market, PS3, sales, uk, Wii, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (37)

Oh noes! The start of The British Empire 2!

At least we're nicer than the Romans

Hooray for my fellow countrymen!

We buy up all the Wii Shovelware so you don't have to!

I'm now conflicted on my feelings for England now... on the one hand, I'm all for seeing less shovelware on my shelves. On the other hand, the fact that you're BUYING shovelware is encouraging Ubisoft to make more...

...Meh, I'm know what I'm doing. *starts lynch mob*

Hear! Hear!

I bought Carnival games. Twice.

"the Japanese market is worth £520,000"

I think that should read "the Japanese market is worth £520,000 MORE" 'cause the market is worth, as you say, in 2009 £3.86 billion. So thats a big jump from 1/2million to 3086million.

OMG, their gonna buy even more Wiis and DSs!?

In a brighter world, that 50% population penetration rate that was projected for the Wii in Britain would come true

I'm considering buying both this year, so I guess so.

Is this we spend more, or make more money?
I suppose we have been growing as a population of gamer's, but I would have never guessed we spent more on games than Japan.
Even with a companies like Rockstar, Lionhead n MM doing well over the past year I would think we could beat the Japanese companies either (which surely include Nintendo)

And I'm a reading it right, but it seem's to say Japanese market is worth £520,00 n UK market is £4.77Billion and the Japanese market is £3.86Billion. Typo?

Let's celebrate with tea and crumpets!

Gotta love stereotypes!
I dont know anyone who eats crumpits regularly, and I for one would much prefer a Starbucks and a croissant.

@ Henry:

You've just met one :P

I frequently enjoy a mug of breakfast tea and two buttered crumpets in the mornings.

Can't beat a good cuppa rosy lee!

All bow to Queen Elizabeth II!

Good stuff... I live in the UK and buy a lot of games, so no surprises there for me.

Odd. Isn't Britain's population half of Japan, or is that just England? Anyone feed me some figures?

That's pretty accurate. According to Wiki, Japan has 127 million to the UK's 61 million.

Japan's Population is:127,288,416

UK's Population is: 60,943,912

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/uk.html

Looks like it's the whole UK. That's a lot of spending.

England makes up the vast majority of the roughly 60 million in the UK, I'd say about 5 million in Scotland, 3 million in Wales and 2 million in Northern Ireland. Japan has about 127 million so more than double than the whole UK

Hurrah for Wikipedia!

Tally ho, what what, pip pip old chaps.

This is probably a two pronged attack. The Brits are flat out buying more games, and the Japanese are getting older for some reason. They're having trouble maintaining their population. According to Cnn, Canon has begun to send employees home early to have sex. This also saves on the notorious overtime costs that the Japanese are known for.

Do they get paid, like you do when you're donating blood?

It already rocks that they'll send you home to do it. Getting paid to have sex with your own wife during work hours is about as good as life can possibly get.

Nah. Half of it is a cost cutting technique the other is a way to help their population. Japan needs their people to reproduce at a 2:1 ratio and its a little lower.

Bloody hell. This is bullocks

*awaits Joystiq's weekly edition of UK hardware sales*

We still haven't got the drugs supply to create some of the game ideas of Japan just yet though.

Even if we spend 10x as much as japan and us combined, we're still gonna have to wait 10 years for good stuff... if it comes at all

One reason for the rise in UK sales that needs to be factored in is the decline of the British Pound. I can imagine that in 2008 a growing number in online/mail order sales for UK stores originated from the european mainland - video games are ridiculously cheap compared to the SRPs in continental Europe. I ordered pretty much all of my games in the UK in 2008.

For instance:
Usually, the SRP for a new PS3 title in the UK is GBP 39.99, that's around EUR 40.00.
In Germany, the SRP for a new PS3 title is EUR 69.99.

3 weeks after release, Little Big Planet was sold for under GBP 20.00 while the mainland still stuck with prices close to the SRP range.

I don't mean to be an internet Nazi (probably poor choice), but 40 pounds is not worth 40 euros. isnt 10 pounds like 15 euros?

@Draco I don't know if you know, but there's this big-time economic downturn. Exchange rates have fallen to near parity - it's crazy!

I think that's actually maybe a reason for the sales NOT going the way this article predicts. The yen is now worth crazy money, meaning that if you convert a pound to yen, you get about 3 円 for it compared to last years' eleventeen zillion yen-per-pound.

Or in other words, if the UK gaming market started off already less than Japan last year, and the average yen you got for £1 last year was 25% more than this year's average, then the UK gaming market has to grow by 25% just to stay level!

hmm i only like games from Canada and Japan. What good games come outta the UK besides GTA4? (I don't like any GTAs too)

haven't played fable yet either

LittleBigPlanet

Theres a good number of classics that are English made, like all the timesplitters, hitman, original tomb raiders, goldeneye (i mean come on) so yeah there is a lot of good stuff out there.

If Japan has twice the population wouldn't this mean that the UK would be spending over twice as much on video games? I don't know if I believe that.

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UK gaming market could eclipse Japan's in '09

Reader Comments (37)

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