Linkage to the article

UK industry off to a flyer in 2009

Unit sales for first five weeks of the year up 37 per cent on 2008; ‘We are beating Japan’ says ChartTrack

The UK software market has kicked off 2009 by thrashing last year’s January performance – and overtaking Japan to become the second biggest territory in the world.

GfK-ChartTrack revealed this week that the UK software market grew by 26 per cent in 2008 – leaving it ahead of Japan in terms of unit sales in the year.

And UK GfK-ChartTrack director Dorian Bloch has predicted that the UK can move ahead of Japan in terms of revenue this year – as recently predicted by MCV.

For the first five weeks of this year, the UK console market grew year-on-year by 37 per cent in units and by 21 per cent in terms of revenues.

“I haven’t got a crystal ball, but it’s very much a possibility that the UK will overtake Japan in terms of annual software revenue,” Bloch told MCV.

“Japan is certainly in decline at the moment, mainly down to the fact that everyone seems to have already bought a DS or PSP, so hardware sales aren’t driving software sales – although DSi is flying off the shelves. The very sudden decline of PS2 is also a factor. The Japanese market is about twice the size of ours, so there is room for manoeuvre in terms of people who had a DS four years ago and want a new handheld.”

Bloch said the UK’s blistering start to the year could be attributed to the cheap sales at stores such as Zavvi.

He added: “We need to wait until the middle of the year and have a firm date for DSi’s launch. Then we’ll really know what sort of year we’ll have.”

So, there you go. Go Blighty! If someone else has posted this, well, erm, oops.

Japan = Japwned

Handhelds are the cancer killing the Japanese market

Well, next generation will be the one where the UK will get a very firm cementing in second place, and the EU as a whole will probably become the single largest and most important market.

 You mean if the Dollar doesn't make a come back... and it will.  I expect that the market as a whole will see significant growth everywhere next generation as Microsoft and Sony tap into the market that Nintendo solely owns.

 Why would it matter if the dollar comes back or not? As far as I'm aware the pound has been stronger than the dollar for decades now (but I am most probably wrong), and the Euro, I'm not so sure about (it hasn't been around for long).

But, currency conversion aside. The EU is the largest market in the world. The majority of the richest countries per capita are from the EU (7 of the top 10 richest-per-capita countries are from the EU). The EU, as a whole, has more money total than the US, and with the rapid expansion of the Eastern European nation's economies, this will only continue. Also bearing in mind that the EU has around 200 million more citizens than the US.

For all accounts and purposes, the EU should be the largest market now, and it will certainly be outpacing the US within the next decade.

Unless, of course you were talking about the UK on its own becoming the second largest market, but then, what would the dollar have to do with that? That's essentially just the UK Vs. Japan.

There is no EU games market. It's a collection of small markets each with their own national tastes and language. Each country has to have it's own marketing campaign, translation and testing. Then there's the little things like no Nazi symbolism in German games, but it's fine in Austria.

The US is one huge unified market, which coincedently shares the same langugae and a lot of the same game tastes as the UK. Even more games will cater to the US/UK market becuase no other market is big enough.

Considering the populations of both countries, thats an incredible achivement for the UK.

The problem with the EU compared to the US is that it is not a unified market. You have to adopt different/diverse strategies to capture different markets. So the costs are higher but benefits are lower because...

a) The taxes are higher, so the profit margin is lower.

b) Due to higher income inequality across highly heterogenous countries, and historical/cultural reasons, the piracy is widespread (a lot more than America).

So America will keep driving the world sales for a long while (even though it would be smaller in volume in total compared to EU).

Japan will also continue to play an important role (more than the UK or any other country but US) for a long while as long as the biggest players in the industry are from Japan (like Nintendo and Sony) and release their products first in Japan. But it's undeniable that Japan does not have the sunshine it used to have and it is dimming further away every other day.

a toast to the british!

UK! UK! UK! UK!

And stuff