UK physical game sales plummet in 2024 as EA Sports FC 25 tops charts
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The demise of physical games accelerated significantly last year in the UK, as overall game revenue also took a hit. Physical game sales have been on a steady decline over the past decade, with some high-profile games like Hellblade 2 and Alan Wake 2 having ditched boxed copies altogether.
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The growing dominance of digital can also be seen with the digital-only versions of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, and while there has been some pushback against an all-digital future with specialist sites like Limited Run, the demise of physical games now feels inevitable.
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This tracks with new UK sales data, which shows 2024 was a significant turning point in the decline of physical sales. According to data from the Entertainment Retailers Association, which is based on figures from Nielsen, India, and GSD, video game revenue in the UK dropped 4.4% last year, to £4.6 billion.
As reported by Chris Dring, this drop primarily stems from a collapse in physical game revenue in the country, with only £324.4 million generated by sales of boxed games in 2024. This is a drop of ‘nearly 35%’ when compared to 2023. When you compare these numbers with digital, the difference is massive. In 2024, the digital market generated £4.29 billion through console, PC, mobile, and tablet game sales, which was only a 1% drop year-over-year.
Among these digital figures, PC download sales were down 5%, console downloads were down 15%, while mobile and tablet gaming rose by 2.6%. Interestingly, subscription revenue went up 12%, which could be due to a boost in subscriber numbers, or simply because services like PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass bumped up their prices over the past year.
