kamil on 26 January 2008
@bigjon:
Kamil, do you know what it means for M&S to be #1? Like how many copies sold would that make if it were given a number? I am reffering to the Netherlands mainly, but am also intersted in UK.
I can't say much about Netherlands. I am sure it is smaller market than Italy', perhaps it's a half of it. In Italy in a "calm week" (like this one) a title one first place sell normally between 5k to 10k. In December it was 25-50k and a very big title can hit over 100k in first week (for example PES 2008 only on PS2 sold 150k first week). My guess is that in Netherland the numbers may be around half of those.
It's more easier to speak about UK market however calculation may be a little more complicated. Generally UK it's huge. In 2007 its market value was at 3.05 bln pounds* (around 6 bln USD). USA market was at 17 bln USD. This means UK video market value is at 35% of what US is. However games are priced higher in EU. So in terms of units UK is probably around 25% of what is sold in US.You can look at NA charts on this page and multiply it by 0.22-0.23 (remember to subtract 10% for Canada) to get general idea. A title on first place should normally be between 15-40k but in December possibly around 100k. Big titles can of course do more: Halo 3 and Fifa 08 (on all platforms) sold around 400k in first week, AC and CoD4 (counted on both platforms) sold over 200k in first week.
*This excludes PC market value (around 300 mln pounds) for easier comparision with American market.
