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British Videogames Industry's £5.11bn Revenue In 2017

British Videogames Industry's £5.11bn Revenue In 2017

New research from UK videogames trade body Ukie shows consumer spending on videogames in the UK rose 12.4% year-on-year in 2017 to reach a total of £5.11bn across all sectors.

2017 was hailed by many as the year of VR and that claim is borne out by the VR hardware sector’s revenue increase of an impressive 23.5% year-on-year to £101m in 2017, according to the new report. Despite the popular perception that VR hasn’t take off as quickly as expected, its level of growth beats the videogames industry’s overall average by 11.1%.

 

VR Growing Other Sectors

VR’s contribution to the UK’s gaming market doesn’t end with VR hardware, as the data also shows a massive 51% rise for PC hardware, taking the sector from £249m to £376m - the largest year-on-year growth for any single sector.

The report attributes much of this to an increase in demand for more powerful CPU and GPU units capable of running high-end VR headsets such as Rift or Vive.

Console hardware also showed impressive growth, with revenue up 29.2% to £659m for the year. This will, of course, include Sony’s PlayStation 4 required to run PS VR, as well as many existing users upgrading to PlayStation 4 Pro for an optimal experience.

 

What About Software?

Digital and online games - the only way that many VR games can be purchased by the consumer - saw the biggest overall growth at 13.4 % year-on-year to a total of £1.6bn.

The next best performance in software lies with mobile gaming - including mobile AR, as well as smartphone-powered VR for platforms such as Gear VR and Daydream - up 7.8% to £1.7bn.

Boxed software saw relatively modest growth at 3.1% to £790m.

 

Here’s a handy infographic from Ukie that summarises the findings:

 

Compiled in partnership with data from GfK, NPD, Superdata, Kantar Worldpanel, Nielsen, ABC, the Official Charts Company and the British Film Institute.

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Managing Editor

Steve is an award-winning editor and copywriter with nearly 25 years’ experience specialising in consumer technology and video games. He was part of a BAFTA nominated developer studio. In addition to editing TheVirtualReport.biz, Steve contributes to BeyondGames.biz, PocketGamer.biz, PCGamesInsider.biz and BlockchainGamer.biz, as well as creating marketing content for a range of SMEs and agencies.