Remember how I said that the physical games market must have done pretty poorly last week, given that Grid 2 managed to stay at the top of the UK charts despite selling half as many copies as in the previous week and despite selling 29% fewer copies than the original Grid in the week it did launch? Well, it looks like I was right, as a Tweet from UK-based games writer Lee Bradley – spotted by MCV – states that the Xbox Live Arcade (i.e. digital) game State of Decay sold almost as many units in two days as the entirety of UK retail did in that week.
For stats fans, State of Decay did 250k on XBLA in two days (June 5th – 6th). UK retail did 276k all week (w/e June 8th).
— Lee Bradley (@Lee_Bradley) June 14, 2013
To add insult to injury, MCV adds, “last week’s UK market – worth just £6.02m – was the lowest on record.”
Things are changing in the games industry, and these statistics are proof of that. For one thing, the charts produced only with info from sales of physical media are far from representative of actual trends in the industry. That said, as MCV points out, State of Decay is an outlier as far as digital games are concerned. As I wrote a few days ago, State of Decay is the second most successful game in its first couple of days, the first – obviously – being Minecraft XBLA Edition.
How do you feel about the state of UK retail after learning that one game has managed to sell almost as many units on its own?
