The launch of Wii: a defining moment for the mainstream-isation of games. Mainstream-isation?!Industry trade body ELSPA has released UK videogame sales figure for the first half of 2009. Unsurprisingly perhaps, Nintendo’s ‘casual’ titles have fared extremely well, with Wii Fit, Wii Play and Mario Kart Wii boasting combined sales volumes of 1.65 million units – equating to 72% of the top five ‘best sellers’ in the UK individual format chart. Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training has also surpassed the three million sales mark, apparently making it Britain’s most popular game ever.
From the press release:
The number of home and portable gaming consoles in the UK now stands at 24 million which, to put in perspective, is around the same number as there are UK households. This growth in popularity was underlined in a report by Nielsen Research for the Interactive Software Federation of Europe which showed that 33% of the UK population between the ages of 30 and 49 describe themselves as ‘active gamers’ and 82% say they play videogames with their children.
UK videogame sales witnessed another good performance in the first half of 2009 with the second best set of figures in history. Whilst in real terms, year-on-year sales are down 5.7%, with 29.7 million units sold compared to 31.5 million units for the same period in 2008, the results remain encouraging for the country’s industry.
ELSPA also provides a top ten all formats game chart for the first half of the year…
1. Wii Fit
2. FIFA 09
3. Call Of Duty: World At War
4. Resident Evil 5
5. Wii Play
6. Mario Kart Wii
7. Professor Layton And The Curious Village
8. Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games
9. Street Fighter IV
10. Guitar Hero: World Tour
I suppose these figures confirm what we already know – that the casual gaming sector as appropriated and refined by Nintendo, is huge business, and it’s changing the way that both gamers and game publishers think about interactive entertainment. I think this all ties in neatly with a fascinating interview Develop Magazine has just conducted with Mike Mika, head of development at Other Ocean. He talks about how games can be successfully integrated with social networking systems to create shared experiences that run across multiple platforms. The best part is where he envisions a future version of Animal Crossing in which you play co-operatively with friends, whether they’re on console, PC or iPhone, posting your achievements to Facebook as you progress.
What the ELSPA figures quietly confirm, alongside a growing mass of comparable data, is that society really is moving beyond the age of mass non-interactive entertainment. Television jumped the shark with reality TV; the nation’s cognitive surplus is being deployed elsewhere.
