UK game industry beats Japan, takes second place

by Majed Athab { Feb 10th 2009 at 6:21PM }

The reality of the Japanese gaming market is rather grim. As the industry continues to tumble in the region, other territories like the UK are climbing the ladder. GfK-ChartTrack reveals that the British software market grew by 26 percent last year – a sharp contrast to Japan's yearly decline. It's a bit ironic to hear all this, considering that major Japanese developers are the ones making the big bucks in Britain while local companies are getting reshuffled.

In any case, growth continues to follow through into 2009 as the first five weeks of the year witnessed massive year-on-year growth for the UK. Console unit sales went up by 37 percent over that of last year and revenue is up 21 percent. This all means that the Brits have knocked Japan down into third place and are now the second largest game territory in the world – after having used Japan's own assets against them. Ouch.

Tags: britain, industry, japan, retail, sales, uk

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Longhorn4Life @ Feb 10th 2009 6:25PM

Good news for Sony

flanker22 @ Feb 10th 2009 10:18PM

i question the accuracy of this article, evidence? wii/ds alone should massively surpass UK. while there are several developers in UK they rarely publish the actual games meaning they dont make the majority of the profits. seems like they're playing around with the numbers.

not to mention UK had a really big year, GTA4/Fable2/LBP (all uk developers).

Vanillacide @ Feb 11th 2009 5:06AM

flanker22: its sales, not developers.

abib @ Feb 10th 2009 6:30PM

that means microsoft are dominating the two largest game territory in the world, over Sony. interesting ...

Deadpool @ Feb 10th 2009 6:33PM

No....wha.....huh.....za? How can the UK....and japan losing? With the Wii and Playstation....I think I'm gonna be sick. I just ate too much butterfinger ice cream.

Doug @ Feb 10th 2009 7:37PM

I think you're just dying. Don't worry, it happens to the best of us.

Deadpool @ Feb 10th 2009 10:17PM

"Don't worry, it happens to the best of us."

Ha! That means I'm the best! XP

Maverick Saturn @ Feb 10th 2009 6:33PM

Damn right! UK owns :P

Deadpool @ Feb 10th 2009 6:40PM

UK will offically own when they start saying Teenage Mutant NINJA Turtles instead of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.

Bobulous @ Feb 10th 2009 6:46PM

We'll say Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when you start pronouncing 'herbs' with an h.

finnith @ Feb 10th 2009 7:09PM

I'll start pronouncing herbs with an 'h' when you admit that it's 'skedule, not 'shedule' (I'm referring to the pronunciation.

Bobulous @ Feb 10th 2009 7:17PM

Ok, but "route sounds like root. Not like rout - which is a different word altogether :D

fred @ Feb 10th 2009 7:18PM

I agree whole heartedly with deadpool

the_pop @ Feb 10th 2009 7:28PM

I'm from the UK and I don't know anyone who calls them Hero Turtles or says 'shedule'.

Maverick Saturn @ Feb 10th 2009 9:13PM

Lol, what about Eyerack and Eyeran :)

pjsingh @ Feb 10th 2009 9:50PM

LOL, Maverick Saturn is totally right. It is a-raq (short a) and a-ran (short a again)

Vanillacide @ Feb 11th 2009 5:07AM

@the_pop "I'm from the UK and I don't know anyone who ... says 'shedule'."

Sigh, state of Britain today -- the English is SCHedule; guess all your friends have been Americanised with SKedule.

Do you also say LEWtenant instead of LEFtenant for Lieutenant, missle instead of missile, aluminum instead of aluminium, airplane instead of aeroplane?

Tomadda, tomato, potadda, potato, etc. :p

abib @ Feb 11th 2009 8:51AM

lol a-raq.

it is eee-ruck. it's arabic, and there is no e vowel in arabic language. not eye-rack, or however dumb americans say it.

Nein_Sporg @ Feb 10th 2009 6:38PM

In case anyone misunderstands, this is people buying games within Japan and UK, not the sales of Japanese or UK games in other regions.

Japanese people are becoming less and less interested in games. Handhelds are also dominating the region because Japanese only have fee time on trains and such. PSP outsells Wii, PS3, and 360 TOGETHER in Japan, think about that. That's not even brining up DS which is even bigger than PSP.

sam @ Feb 11th 2009 11:47AM

And also, according to the source, they are claiming that in *unit* sales Britain is ahead of Japan. Coming ahead of Japan in total sales *revenue* (which I should think dramatically depends on currency fluctuation) is something they're predicting for the coming year, not stating for the past one.

In other words, more games are apparently sold in Britain than in Japan, but they're cheaper.

Have to say I still find this pretty surprising - gaming is still not really mainstream here, and it's very rare that you see an adult playing games on a train for instance. (Kids? All the time.) Kind of wonder what those more, cheaper games are... the crazy frog game didn't sell THAT much...

LaughingTarget @ Feb 10th 2009 6:39PM

Wow, this means the UK is a much larger market per capita. I'm shocked since Japan has twice as many people.

Maverick Saturn @ Feb 10th 2009 9:24PM

That just proves we are more game nerdy :D Ha!

slycooper_rocker (The Agent of Orange) @ Feb 10th 2009 10:10PM

i would pay soooo much for a british accent.

Poisoned Al @ Feb 10th 2009 6:40PM

You know, I'm not overly surprised any more. There is just as much floor space for games then there is for movies at my local Blockbuster, and there's game ads on the TV all the time. I just wish there was more help to those MAKING games in the UK.

Bobulous @ Feb 10th 2009 6:43PM

What's the betting most releases still turn up here later than the U.S. or Japan?

Poisoned Al @ Feb 10th 2009 6:49PM

Well unless we all dump our old PAL TVs and go Hi-Def, not for awhile.

Hyams @ Feb 10th 2009 6:52PM

I has gone HD.

Poisoned Al @ Feb 10th 2009 10:26PM

I have an HD TV too. A Braiva. It's nice. VOTE ME UP TOO FOR NO GOOD REASON! :D

steve @ Feb 11th 2009 4:48AM

Some say.... he's the best one eyed Scottish idiot.... IN THE WORLD!

&rew @ Feb 10th 2009 6:41PM

Should I be the one to point out that the UK is a continent and Japan is a country.

&rew @ Feb 10th 2009 6:43PM

Crap, something in my brain confuses UK with Europe.

Poisoned Al @ Feb 10th 2009 6:45PM

BURN HIM!

Maverick Saturn @ Feb 10th 2009 9:13PM

Roflmao, UK is a continent is it? Lol

Poisoned Al @ Feb 10th 2009 6:42PM

Oh, and BTW, Brown is Scottish, so is less "old boy" and more "SEE YOU YA TINY EYED SHIT YOU!"

Poisoned Al @ Feb 10th 2009 6:51PM

Well, in the case of Borwn, it's more being dull and doing goldfish impressions. Why DOES he do that mouth thing he does after each sentance?

MrXBob @ Feb 10th 2009 6:54PM

GOLDFISH! THANKYOU! I've been annoyed by that stupid..... thing for ages, and now I have the perfect way to describe it!

Bobulous @ Feb 10th 2009 7:04PM

Me too. But there are still millions of PAL CRT tellies out there - especially in Eastern Europe - so publishers and console manufacturers still have to support them. It'll be a good few years before we're HDTV only.

Danshini @ Feb 10th 2009 7:04PM

So who is first in the games territory?
he he i kid i kid

i figured the UK would increase in the game sales and such
as everyone i know is starting to buy 360's, and are always asking me what games they should get, or what games they suggest i get.

And all my friends always talk about Japanese type games, like final fantasy, chrono trigger, and pretty much all jrpg's.

*Off Topic (a bit)*

Does anyone think Gordon Brown was a good choice to be prime minister?

Bobulous @ Feb 10th 2009 7:10PM

Well - there wasn't anyone else willing to step forward, so there wasn't a lot of choice. He's ok, IMO. Not brilliant, but no worse than the Tories. And less smug than Blair. They're all much of a muchness really, but I'd rather have Gordon Brown than that oily git David Cameron.

Mr Khan @ Feb 10th 2009 7:11PM

I think many people have been warming to him since the economy went in the tank. Certainly saved Labour from otherwise certain demise

Vanillacide @ Feb 11th 2009 6:32AM

Bobulous: so you go by "oily git", personal attacks, rather than policies?

Gordon Brown sold off Britain's gold reserve at the bottom of the market (and pre announced it which drove the price down even further) to cash it in, raided the private pension industry to such an extent that he has destroyed private industries' pensions, encourage the housing price boom in order to get capital gains tax, presided over a credit boom to get sales tax (VAT) -- another consequence of low interest rates was the run-away credit that has created the credit crunch -- and the Labour government borrowed to its limits over the last twelve years even thought it had record tax income ... and for what?

For the first time in history the average salary of people employed by the state is greater than private industry, in many areas of the country the number of people employed by the state outnumbers the number of people employed in private industry; and public sector pensions are protected and topped up by the state. So bearing in mind that the taxes of people in the private sector pay for the public sector ... we can see where all the money has gone!

Have you also noticed that Gordon Brown no longer says things like "We spend seven times as much on NHS as the previous government"? It's because people realise it's not seven time better; it's worse value for money for tax payers.

That's before we even start to consider his war mongering predecessor, or the current debacle.

Bobulous @ Feb 11th 2009 8:05AM

Yup. Labour aren't perfect, but the Tories are just as bad. How many unpopular policies did they pass? Or industries did they sell off? How many people did they put out of work? I seem to recall they mismanaged the economy in the early 90s too. There's not a lot to choose from between Labour and the Tories these days, but yes, I'd still much rather have Brown in charge than Cameron any day.

Mr Khan @ Feb 10th 2009 7:07PM

There's your reason why so many Wii games are in Japan than elsewhere. They have to bid up their efforts there to try and raise flagging sales.

Also why the Japanese devs are trying to appeal to the Westerners. The market is shrinking. No two ways about it.

Marty @ Feb 10th 2009 7:13PM

This is just further reason why the games industry shouldn't care so much about catering to a Japanese market.

Poisoned Al @ Feb 10th 2009 8:29PM

Trying to appeal to the British market! Ha! That's an amusing concept.

Doomed to fail of course, because trying to localize a popular product from aboard hardly ever works. Pimp My Ride UK has to be the most painful show ever put on TV, until they finish the American Top Gear.