GAME for a laugh (GMG)

2005 hardware revenues up over 200%
11:45GMT, Jan 4th by Lisa Foster
More good news for the UK games market as ChartTrack figures reveal that hardware sales volumes during 2005 were up by 34 per cent – with the arrival of new platforms seeing value rise by a staggering 222 per cent.
According to early data from the games industry’s research firm – commissioned by ELSPA – almost 3.75 million units of hardware (excluding PCs) were sold last year. That compares to around 2.80m units in 2004.

And the launch of Xbox 360, PSP, Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance Micro saw hardware revenues leap to almost £300m in 2005, from £93m in 2004.

There were no major surprises in terms of top-sellers, with PS2 selling some 1.2m units during the year. The rival handhelds from Nintendo and Sony were almost neck and neck, with DS notching up around 800,000 units and PSP 795,000 – although PSP was launched around six months after DS.

Meanwhile, around 129,000 Xbox 360s were sold in its first month on sale in the UK, with the original Microsoft console achieving around 265,000 sales during the year. GBA SP achieved a sell-through of around 63,000.