Software generates £519m, hardware £405m
The UK games market has seen a massive growth in year-on-year revenues of 42 per cent for the first half of 2007, powered by strong sales of DS, Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 software.
For the first 26 weeks of 2007, the UK market generated GBP 1.02 billion (EUR 1.5bn) in revenue including hardware, software and accessory sales - compared to 718 million for the same period last year.
Software was responsible for GBP 519 million (EUR 767m) in revenue, with sales of DS titles climbing a staggering 164 per cent to GBP 91 million (EUR 134.4m), compared to 34 million in 2006.
Software for the Xbox 360 was the greatest performer for the first half of the year, generating GBP 101 million (EUR 134m), a rise of 73 per cent, compared to GBP 58 million (EUR 85.7m) last year.
The Nintendo Wii sold GBP 46 million (EUR 68m) worth of software while the PlayStation 3 – which only launched in late March – has already clocked up sales of GBP 37 million (EUR 54m).
Console hardware generated revenues of GBP 405 million (EUR 598.8m), with 45 per cent attributable to Sony, Nintendo securing 39 per cent and Microsoft 17 per cent.
Breaking the hardware figure down further, GBP 101 million (EUR 149.3m) of revenue came from handheld consoles, with Nintendo taking 64 per cent of the market and Sony taking the remaining 36 per cent.
Home consoles accounted for GBP 304 million (EUR 449.5m) of revenue, with Sony generating 47 per cent of the figure, Nintendo 30 per cent and Microsoft 22 per cent. Overall, sales of home consoles shot up by 189 per cent.
Even console accessories saw an impressive climb in sales of 74 per cent to GBP 98 million (EUR 144.9m), compared to GBP 57 million (EUR 84.2m) in 2006.
All figures are copyright Chart Track / ELSPA.
Source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=26450
The article doesn't have numbers in it, but I will try to get an estimation of the number of units from them.
Consoles sold for a total GBP 304M, where Sony sold GBP 142.9M, Nintendo sold GBP 91.2M and Microsoft sold 66.9M. For Nintendo and Microsoft those sales will be almost 100% for the Wii and XBox 360, since Gamecube and XBox will hardly sell anymore. For Sony however there is the problem of PS2 most likely still selling a significant amount of consoles, which means part of the 142.9M should be contributed to that console and not to PS3. But since I have no idea what the correct split up is, I'll just contribute it all to PS3, which will result in too high numbers for PS3 of course.
Now regarding the prices of all 3 consoles. As far as I know Wii is sold for GBP 180. XBox 360 has 2 different types where the Premium package is GBP 280 and the Core GBP 200. Since more Premiums are sold but the console is out for a while I expect stores to offer the console for lower than ERP or add a game for free. I think going for GBP 250 is reasonable as an average retail price, so I'll use that to calculate unit sales. For PS3 the official price is GBP 425, but quickly after launch there were reports of selling them for GBPO 400 already. So that will be the price I'll use.
So that gives the following numbers:
PS3: 142.9M/400= 357k
Wii: 91.2M/180= 507k
XBox 360: 66.9M/250= 268k
These numbers seem to show that PS3 and XBox 360 are probably close to each other in sales for the first 6 months in the UK. PS3 numbers are too high because of the inclusion of PS2 revenue. Take those away and I think they'll be close to each other. Wii seems to sell about as much as the other 2 combined.
