According to the Entertainment Retailer’s Association, whatever that is, sales of video games in the UK saw their second consecutive year of growth in 2014, rising by a mighty 7.5%.
Interestingly (disclaimer: it's not that interesting... PSYCHE!), purchases of physical software dropped by 6.6% - but this was offset by a rise of 18.8% in digital sales, meaning that, overall, peoples coughed out £2.5 billion on games last year. Put this alongside slight declines in sales of music (dropped by 1.6%) and movies (a slide of 1.4%), and you could dab your lips with it.
The biggest-selling physical entertainment product of the year was Disney’s all-conquering Frozen DVD – shifting over 4 million units - but FIFA 15 and Call o' Duty: Advanced Warfare were barking hard at its 'popliteal fossa' with 2.6 million and almost 1.9 million physical copies sold, respectively.
The other games in the Top 20 were Grand Theft Auto V as the sixth most sold physical entertainment thing, Destiny at number 14, and – huh?! – Watch Dogs at 18, with just over 800,000 slightly mediocre copies sold in so-called “shops”.
Interestingly (disclaimer: it's not that interesting... PSYCHE!), purchases of physical software dropped by 6.6% - but this was offset by a rise of 18.8% in digital sales, meaning that, overall, peoples coughed out £2.5 billion on games last year. Put this alongside slight declines in sales of music (dropped by 1.6%) and movies (a slide of 1.4%), and you could dab your lips with it.
The biggest-selling physical entertainment product of the year was Disney’s all-conquering Frozen DVD – shifting over 4 million units - but FIFA 15 and Call o' Duty: Advanced Warfare were barking hard at its 'popliteal fossa' with 2.6 million and almost 1.9 million physical copies sold, respectively.
The other games in the Top 20 were Grand Theft Auto V as the sixth most sold physical entertainment thing, Destiny at number 14, and – huh?! – Watch Dogs at 18, with just over 800,000 slightly mediocre copies sold in so-called “shops”.
WHAT THIS MEANS
Place all of these numbers into a brown clog and there is only one conclusion: that all this stuff means some sort of other stuff, or something.
Of course, what nobody who reports these figures takes into consideration is the fact that games cost more than DVDs or CDs. However, by the simple fact of writing that sentence we have rendered it obsolete, for now there is someone who takes all of the above into consideration: us guys.
Indeed, since the Xbox One and PS4 strode onto the scene, like a pair of swaggering czars, the average price of a game has risen.
Nevertheless… only the most obtuse of idiots could deny that sales of games are up, by a lot, and sales of DVDs and CDs are down, by a bit. It remains that more people are playing games than ever before, and games are consequently more important than ever before. And in this context, we're talking important in an economic, business sense, rather than some poncey, fartsy, artistic one.
Place all of these numbers into a brown clog and there is only one conclusion: that all this stuff means some sort of other stuff, or something.
Of course, what nobody who reports these figures takes into consideration is the fact that games cost more than DVDs or CDs. However, by the simple fact of writing that sentence we have rendered it obsolete, for now there is someone who takes all of the above into consideration: us guys.
Indeed, since the Xbox One and PS4 strode onto the scene, like a pair of swaggering czars, the average price of a game has risen.
Nevertheless… only the most obtuse of idiots could deny that sales of games are up, by a lot, and sales of DVDs and CDs are down, by a bit. It remains that more people are playing games than ever before, and games are consequently more important than ever before. And in this context, we're talking important in an economic, business sense, rather than some poncey, fartsy, artistic one.
FACTS
All these facts are fine and that, and make it look like we've actually done some research, but the important thing is what they point towards: that games are now all-embracing, like an inappropriate uncle.
It's a party that, frankly, everyone is welcome at.
Oh, sure, there are different rooms playing different music - the goths might not want to hang out in the hipster room listening to ironic techno remixes of the Thomas The Tank Engine theme, or a sub-bass mash-up of Masterchef and Seasick Steve - but we're all under one roof now. One way or another, we are all gamers (by our definition, a society that plays games).
DIVIDE-ME-DON'T
It's what makes some of the furious divides between gaming factions all the more ridiculous, not least because the vast majority of gamers aren't even aware of things like Gamergate; they're just happy playing their Temple Runs on the bus, or indulging in an hour of Football Manager after work. That's who most of us - we gamers - are. We're not sure how much we care.
But in that broad definition of "gamer" there's space for people who want to play obscure, more experimental titles - step forwards Thomas Was Alone, or The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, or Depression Quest and your ilk - and, consequently, space for those games to be made. And by the same token there a place for everything else too.
It's unlikely to happen, because human beings are inherently rubbish and prone towards conflict and relying on perpetuating the misery of others to validate their own existence, but we hold out a naive and futile hope that 2015 could be the year that bridges some of these divides. Or, at the very least, the year in which everyone stays in their own camps and stops flinging cans of rat piddle over the fence.
Games are for gamers, and gamers arrive in every shape, size, and smell.
All these facts are fine and that, and make it look like we've actually done some research, but the important thing is what they point towards: that games are now all-embracing, like an inappropriate uncle.
It's a party that, frankly, everyone is welcome at.
Oh, sure, there are different rooms playing different music - the goths might not want to hang out in the hipster room listening to ironic techno remixes of the Thomas The Tank Engine theme, or a sub-bass mash-up of Masterchef and Seasick Steve - but we're all under one roof now. One way or another, we are all gamers (by our definition, a society that plays games).
DIVIDE-ME-DON'T
It's what makes some of the furious divides between gaming factions all the more ridiculous, not least because the vast majority of gamers aren't even aware of things like Gamergate; they're just happy playing their Temple Runs on the bus, or indulging in an hour of Football Manager after work. That's who most of us - we gamers - are. We're not sure how much we care.
But in that broad definition of "gamer" there's space for people who want to play obscure, more experimental titles - step forwards Thomas Was Alone, or The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, or Depression Quest and your ilk - and, consequently, space for those games to be made. And by the same token there a place for everything else too.
It's unlikely to happen, because human beings are inherently rubbish and prone towards conflict and relying on perpetuating the misery of others to validate their own existence, but we hold out a naive and futile hope that 2015 could be the year that bridges some of these divides. Or, at the very least, the year in which everyone stays in their own camps and stops flinging cans of rat piddle over the fence.
Games are for gamers, and gamers arrive in every shape, size, and smell.
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