Video game market in the United Kingdom - Statistics & Facts

UK’s video gaming market at a glance

Between 2019 and 2020, the number of video game users in the UK jumped from 33 million to over 36 million. With over 50 percent of the population embracing gaming as a form of fun, entertainment, or distraction amidst the pandemic, the UK’s video game market has come to be valued at 5.3 billion British pounds. Digital and online games account for the largest share of consumer spending on video games in the UK, as users have gradually traded physical videogame formats for digital purchases. Another sector that has seen considerable growth in recent years is mobile gaming. Thanks to rapid smartphone adoption throughout the UK and an ever-expanding selection of affordable gaming app content, mobile gaming engagement is now higher than ever.

Hard facts and hardware trends

During the past decade, UK consumer spending on gaming console hardware visibly fluctuated in line with the rollout of new consoles. Retail revenue peaked at 915 million British pounds in 2014, following the release of the next-generation Xbox One and PlayStation 4. As of 2019, the PS4 was the top-selling gaming console in the UK based on unit sales, and in late 2020, almost 4.3 million UK households owned at least one PlayStation model. While Sony’s flagship console series has dominated the UK gaming landscape and maintained the highest market share of console operating systems in the country for years, Microsoft’s Xbox took the lead in 2020. Since then, the console wars have heated up again, following the launch of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.

What are the most popular video games in the UK?

In 2020, video game software retail sales revenue in the UK amounted to 4.22 billion British pounds, with digital software sales accounting for the lion’s share of revenue. Unsurprisingly, FIFA 21 was the best-selling video game in the UK that year, with over 2.18 million copies sold. The FIFA games are a popular football video game series available for PC, Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo, and although gaming behavior and demographics have visibly changed over the past few decades, the series has managed to maintain a spot on the UK’s leaderboard for many years.

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