Video Games Made Less Money Than Film And TV In The UK Last Year

09.01.2024 - 21:34 / thegamer.com

For a long time, video games have been the top dog when it comes to entertainment revenue, having been the most lucrative industry for well over 10 years. You'd have thought that with how good we had it with video game releases last year that this trend would continue, but it turns out revenue from video-based content was higher than that of video games in the United Kingdom for the first time in over a decade.

According to data from the Entertainment Retailers Association, first shared by gamesindsutry.biz, revenue from video games grew by 2.9 percent to £4.74 billion (roughly $6 billion) over the past year, with that figure being made up of both physical and digital sales on pretty much all platforms, including mobile.

That's a pretty impressive chunk of change, but what's more impressive is that revenue from "video-based content" grew by 10 percent to £4.9 billion (roughly $6.22 billion). According to the ERA, this rise was primarily driven by the increased cost of subscription services such as Disney Plus and Netflix, with subscription revenue making up 89 percent of the market.

It also helps that the demand for subscription services grew by 12.8 percent during that same time, so more people plus more expensive subscriptions would definitely equal more money.

It helps that there were a couple of big movie releases last year too, including The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Avatar: The Way of Water, the latter being the biggest-selling video title of the year at 560,000 sales. We also had the phenomenon that was Barbenheimer, TV shows like The Last of Us and Succession, and blockbusters like Godzilla: Minus One taking us into 2024. It was a great year for film and TV, and a profitable one too, by the looks of things.

On the video game side of things, EA Sports FC 24 was the biggest-selling console game of 2023 in the UK, generating 2.39 million sales and suffering almost no drop due to ditching the FIFA license. Physical games sales dropped once again as the industry shifts towards the all-digital future on the horizon, as digital sales currently make up 90 percent of total revenue.

It's worth noting that these are just the stats for the UK, though it's difficult to imagine them differing too much in other territories, especially in countries like the US that function similarly to the UK. Whether this trend continues over 2024, which most are considering a bit of a gap year until GTA 6, we'll have to wait and see.