A whopping 63 million console and PC games were bought in the UK last year - that averages at over one game per UK resident.

The UK games market was worth £2.875 billion in 2010, according to official figures from UK trade body UKIE, reported by MCV.

The Xbox 360 was the UK's most lucrative console with hardware revenues of £232 million. The PS3 followed with £229 million. The two platforms combined shifted 2.3 million units.

Xbox 360 game sales amounted to £538 million, PS3 game sales £414 million. 18.2 million Xbox 360 game units and 13.8 million PS3 game units were sold in 2010. In total console software sales hit £1.45 billion.

UKIE did not release sales data for Nintendo products. It did note, however, that only the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles saw growth.

"Despite 2010 being a tough year for the economy, the video games and interactive entertainment industry continues to perform strongly," UKIE director general Mike Rawlinson stated.

2010's £2.875 billion total is down on 2009's £3.3 billion haul. The figures relate to retail/boxed games only, and do not include digital download sales.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-01-04-63-million-games-bought-in-uk-in-2010

And the shitty goverment still wont give the UK Games industry a tax break, seriously sometimes i what dimwitted morons run this country with there daft decisions.

Oh nice figures by the way, i forgot to mention that. :)

Interesting. Growth for both the PS3 and XBox 360 in UK. That's good news.

I actually think this is a case of the success  actually making the Government think "They don't need our help as much as industry x". All the earlier claims the industry was recession-proof probably doesn't help matters. Furthermore, relative to other industries in the country it only represents a small number of potential jobs as well so as far as the government is concerned is small fry.

UK beat Japan by 2 millions in SW sales according to VGChartz.

Interesting - but what do those numbers actually tell?

I mean, a huge percentage of these 63 million are not even going to the UK, they are being exported to other countries. In my country for example many people buy UK imports instead of the local version of a game because UK imports are much cheaper.

And then the uk government take half the money through tax >_>