MCV: report about the UK video game market in 2015

Last week, MCV published its yearly report about the video game market in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, it was down in 2015, with £2.1 billion generated, and sales of games / consoles being down Year on Year. Software went from £948m to £927 million, and Hardware had an even bigger drop: it went from £915 million to £689 million. Only sales of accessories were up: they went from £431 million to £495 million.

Unfortunately for Nintendo, its consoles didn’t do too well in the UK.

Software-wise (and by units), the market share of the Nintendo 3DS (its best platform) is only 4.8%, and 3.5% for the Wii U. The Wii and Nintendo DS have become completely irrelevant: they only weighted for 1% and 0.7% of total Software sales respectively. If we look at the amount of revenue generated, the Nintendo 3DS is slightly lower (3.7%), due to its games being significantly cheaper than on home consoles.

As a publisher, Nintendo had a pretty decent performance in 2015: it was the 6th most successful publisher, with a market share of 6.6%. But again, if we take a look at the amount of revenue generated, Nintendo is slightly down with a 5.7% market share (due to the lower price of Nintendo 3DS Software).

In the Top 50 for Software, there’s only one game exclusive to Nintendo platforms: Mario Kart 8, at #48. On Nintendo 3DS, the best-selling game was the Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D (followed by Tomodachi Life). On Wii U, it’s Mario Kart 8 which takes the crown: unlike in Japan, Splatoon didn’t quite have the same impact on the UK market.

Finally, the Nintendo 3DS Power Adapter is #13 of sales of Accessories, which isn’t really surprising: after all, it’s a mandatory purchase for anyone buying a Nintendo 3DS XL / New Nintendo 3DS / New Nintendo 3DS XL (unless they already own a Nintendo DSi / XL / Nintendo 3DS and didn’t sell it and/or kept the AC Adapter).

Here’s the various graphs with sales for the UK market in 2015:

Source: MCV UK