The United Kingdom is one of the major regions of the video game industry – if the physical shopping is losing ground here, it’s going to happen elsewhere, too.

Let’s quickly mention UKIE‘s weekly charts: FIFA 18, Grand Theft Auto V, and Call of Duty: WWII is on the podium, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch came up to 4th place (Mario Odyssey is also 6th), Monster Hunter World is 5th. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ 9th place is decent. Mind you; these are just physical sales!

In 2016, UK’s supermarkets (Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s…) were responsible for 24.3% of retail game sales. It dropped to 21.1% last year. The game stores, such as GAME, indies, and Argos, also saw a drop from 39.8 to 37.4%. The trend, which started five years ago, is continuing. No wonder that online retail (which doesn’t mean just PlayStation Store/Xbox Marketplace/Steam, but also the online stores of game shops, for example!) saw a massive increase from 35.9 to 41.5% last year (And yet, the physical stores saw a minor increase last year from 6892 to 6908…)

Note how the shelves of the supermarkets are slowly clear up, as they tend to focus on the newest games (plus in average, the games are the most expensive there in the UK), and the minimal average price increase (due to the Nintendo Switch; a 2.5% raise to 33.47 pounds) is also worth a mention.

Shopping online is gaining grounds, and it’s not going to stop.

Source: GameSpot, GamesIndustry