Germany becomes top games market in Europe

by Alexander Sliwinski 

Not only is Germany about to kick off Europe's biggest games convention this week with GamesCom, but it turns out the country has also overtaken the UK as the largest video game market in Europe. Media Control GfK notes that Germany has kept a steady increase during the first half of 2009, while the UK had a 20 percent decline from the previous year.

The UK was one of a few regions to experience a notable decline, with the speculation being that the region was impacted by the global economic crisis more significantly. Let's see if Germany can keeps its edge if the "killerspiel" banning takes effect.

[Via Gamezine]

Yeah just read that article seconds ago on joystiq.
Never thought it would happen anytime soon.

Wow thats weird that its a bigger market now.  I don't remember seeing more being sold in germany than UK.

This is going to reverse itself quickly if they actually do ban violent videogames.

so europeans being even more fucked up the ass than before by censoring all EU versions of console/pc games, confirmed?

Go Deutschland!

Population size and wealth had to win out eventually.

Wow never thought I would ever see an American writing Deutschland without mistakes

How did this happen? I thought a lot of germans imported games from the UK.

I didn't see this one coming.

the "hardcores" or better "insiders" do that, yes, but germany is a very "casual" market, so that had little effect on the market performance