News UK games biz has 'most successful year ever'

From el Reg:

The UK's computer and video games market generated around £2 billion in sales last year even though revenues from hardware sales are expected to have fallen during 2003.

According to early estimates, sales of consoles and hardware remained flat in 2003. However, due to price competition in the run-up to Christmas, revenues are expected to be down.

More here

£2Billion?! That's a lot of games. How much did you contribute to this nice little figure last year?

 

Precisely £0.

But then, I don't play games. Well, not PC games anyway, and my flatmate owns the consoles.

 

I'm not too sure, probably around £100

 

That like 66.6 Million copies @ £30 a game

I cant think of any games that ive bought recently. Ive only been playing my old games, mainly half life and op flash

 

i think it makes sence, a lot of people specially the younger generations, ie <15 years old will buy a game play it single player complete it, play it very little online and move on, and then consoles. You need to chip your box to play "backed up" games most people won't go to the trouble of oppening the console, and with the resent price drops of the x-box no wonder the games industry is worth that much.

 

This is what gets on my nerves, much like the music industry, they claim piracy is killing games sales, yet they post this kind of turnover.

If games were £15 a pop, they'd cut piracy down a notch or two and still turn a decent profit. They might even get up near that figure anyway from people actually buying games instead of downloading them.

 

I could buy a 20p cd and copy a game, and will probbaly need some no-cd patch or sumtin and never be able to update or have online play. This is why u should always buy the real game

The games are over priced imo. But online sellers are reducing prices. To get generals i had to pat £35 from whsmith and online it was £26 odd

The other problem is the lack of good titles imho. The last game i was compelled to go and buy was generals and it didnt impress me that much.

But the sales are still amazingly high

 

I agree with the "nothing good to buy" feeling. It's not that all of the games out are crap, but I don't feel that any of them will hold enough replay value. For instance, I was absolutely addicted to StarCraft, Tribes, and Counter-Strike (back in the b6.1 days). I can't find myself being addicted to most of the games out there now. With the exception of Neverwinter Nights that is .

 

Just to give us american modders an idea of how much 2 billion pounds is, I took the liberity of converting it using live market rates as of 2004.01.08 02:09:44 GMT.


2,000,000,000.00 GBP (United Kingdom Pounds) is 3,627,617,805.72 USD (United States Dollars).



Thats quite a bit of coin ehh?

 

Isn't their billion different than our billion?

 

If you can convert a brit billion better than I, please be my guest.

 

Strictly speaking, a British billion is a million², but for this, let's just stick with your Merkin ones.



PS - Quite amusing is your use of GBP (United Kingdom Pounds). Hehehe.

 

For all intents and purposes we use the American style billion now (1000 million) which if you think about it seems like the "right" one.