Video games made an estimated £4.66bn last year, biggest home entertainment industry in the UK

Preliminary figures from the Digital Entertainment and Retail Association’s annual report (hereon referred to as ERA) reveal video games represented 42.1 percent of the UK’s total home entertainment revenues in 2022.

The UK trade organisation has estimated games made £4.66bn last year (a rise of 2.3 percent from 2021). This means that, once again, games are the biggest home entertainment industry in the UK (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz).

Most of this preliminary figure is made up by digital game sales, which according to ERA are estimated to represent around £4.17bn in revenue. This is a rise of 3.1 percent year-on-year.

Physical game sales for 2022, on the other hand, saw a decline of 4.5 percent, coming in at a comparatively modest £488m.

Meanwhile, physical software sales accounted for 10 percent of the sector in 2022.

“Gaming remains the often-unheralded leader of the entertainment market,” ERA head Kim Bayley stated.

“While growth at 2.3 percent was lower than that of video or music, its scale is enormous and in terms of innovation and excitement it continues to set the pace for the entire entertainment sector.”

In 2022, the entire UK home entertainment market (which includes music and video as well as game sales) is estimated to have reached £11.1bn in revenue.

Even though the gaming sector made more money overall, the fastest growing industry across the board was that of video.

ERA will consolidate these preliminary figures in March.