News - Latest UK games retail figures show 38 per cent decline

[HEXUS]

1.8 million games were sold in the UK during May.

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[Zeven]

So how is the UK doing compared to France and Germany?

[cheesemp]

Not surprised. I used to spend hundreds a year on games but not any more. 90% now are just poor rehashes or ruined by EA (Mass effect 3's forced multiplayer to get the best result and BF3 queue jumping premium pack). I do keep spending on indie games on steam though (and via humble bundle!). I remember the days I use to look forward to a new release of lots of games. Just not that bothered nowadays.

[Noxvayl]

Pretty much what cheesemp said, love those Humble Bundles. I prefer my single player games so I tend to get those once DLC is bundled with them otherwise I only get co-op games like Trine 2 close to release.

[=assassin=]

PC game prices have stayed quite high recently, even online, so I've been waiting and waiting for some in particular to drop. Barely bought anything in the past 6 months, I think just one very old and cheap game. There used to be some good deals on, but since Game had their problems, I've noticed poorer deals all round.

[kalniel]

I've had the opposite experience to you assassin - I've noticed more good offers now than ever before - Diablo 3 was only £20 for me (RRP 35), Kindoms of Amalur and ME3 were both in the teens. Great value for such high production value games, when in the past you used to pay £45 easily for a game that was so buggy you had trouble even launching it.

[kingpotnoodle]

I'm still playing Skyrim (looking forward to Dawnstar) and Shogun:TW2, Steam says I'm nearly at 150+ and 100+ hours respectively, I did over 350 hours on Empire:TW so still some way to go!

Fallout 3, Fallout NV etc entertained me for over 100 hours each.

I don't buy many games as the good ones last me so long, I only get to play a few hours here and there mostly at the weekend so takes a long while to build up.

[crossy]

Pretty much what cheesemp said, love those Humble Bundles. I prefer my single player games so I tend to get those once DLC is bundled with them otherwise I only get co-op games like Trine 2 close to release.

Like he says.

Actually I don't really "get" multiplayer, and more and more games insist that you do that - so the SP campaign is really nothing more than an extended training mode for MP. I'm also pretty disheartened by the amount of "essential" DLC that you've got to buy, and stuff like Activision's "Elite" programme strike me as profiteering of the most blatant kind.

That said, I've gone backwards in my gaming - going into Steam, Origin, etc and picking up some bargains that I'll run into the ground. Favourite XBox game at the moment is Just Cause 2 (quite old) and on the PC I'm playing through Mercenaries 2 (yes, I know it's truly awful, and with more bugs than a sloppy hobo). Before Merc2 I was doing Saints Row 2 - which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Good thing about doing this is that I've got some cracking titles (that I got really cheap) to look forward to - Deus Ex, Batman, Arkham Asylum, Splinter Cell: Conviction, etc.

Given the perilous state of the economy I figure I've got to be quite choosy about what titles I get - especially at the (increasing!) costs that publishers are asking for them. E.g. this year I would have bought at least Assassin's Creed III, CoD:Black Ops 2 and the latest Medal of Honor, along with a half dozen others. Now I figure on only buying 2 of the 3 I named, with maybe one more as-yet-unnamed title. Certainly won't be digging into Halo, etc.

[OilSheikh]

No good games have come out recently.

MAX PAYNE, GHOST RECON, NINJA GAIDEN 3, and ....?

Lollipoo Chainsaw or the 100% buggy Resident Evil : Operation Racoon city doesnt count as good games!

[Jonj1611]

Half the time I just walk past Game now. I used to like going in and browsing but these days, its like one shelf of PC games if your lucky which are either over priced new releases or buy 10 games for a £1, the ones you have never heard of or know you won't play.

[Malphas]

I'm pretty sure the brunt of this is due to the consoles, which are started to look very old in the tooth now which is obviously going to lead to people losing interest. This current generation has been the longest yet with no real sign of imminent replacements. The next generation is allegedly going to last even longer according to analysts, and might well be the last. If the next console generation does lasts as long or longer than this one, then odds are that midway through their lifecycle they end up less powerful than tablets and smartphones - considering their much shorter 12 month or so release cycle. It's possible consoles will go the way of the dedicated MP3 player and become obsolete since their function can or will be made redundant by other devices people already have (e.g. smartphones, tablets, PCs, Smart TV's and game streaming services, etc.).

[3dcandy]

I really can see the next gen as being the last consoles that are must buys. Plenty of people shunning them and playing games on tablets or smartphones in small bursts...

[davesom555]

Malphas, I can definitely see what you are saying coming to fruition in the future. It's quite possible you could just have a dock next to your big screen tv where you can place your phone/tablet and play full screen high res games with a couple of bluetooth (or similar) controllers...

[Betty_Swallocks]

Who's got the money to lash out on games these days? A lot of people just don't have the spare disposable cash that they did a few years back.

I'm still buying games but hardly ever at full price. The last full price game I bought was Sniper Elite 2 which I pre-ordered but apart from that everything I've bought in the last year has been on offer on Steam.

One of the reasons the phone games are taking over is that their price point is below the "thinking about it" threshold.

If you want 30 quid out of my pocket I'm going to think long and hard about whether I really want the game. I've been bitten too many times in the past lashing out loads of money on games that turned out to be disappointing.

I really don't think too hard if I see a phone game that looks as if it could be good. Some of the phone games I've bought I haven't enjoyed but as I've only spent in some cases as little as 69p on them I'm not that bothered.

[shaithis]

Half finished games that require an additional 2-3 times what you paid for the game in DLC to make it complete.......and sales decline....never!

[ik9000]

Why would I pay full whack for a crappy console re-hash which requires me to be always online to play a single player?

Since I moved I've not had fibre and can't get a good enough connection to do multiplayer so no benefit to getting the good few MP games that recently came out. Money's tight as it is, I'm not paying £30 for DRM-tastic games with linear play and crummy console reworking.

They've only got themselves to blame. Make decent games that tax the PC and make use of its capabilities, lobby the ISPs to provide connections suitable for gaming, get rid of oppressive DRM that penalises legitimate buyers and then the situation might change. Til then, what do these companies expect?