Grand Theft Auto V helped video game sales increase for the first time in five years in the UK, demonstrating that there is life left in the market for blockbuster console titles.
While sales of mobile games are booming thanks to the rise of smartphones and tablets, sales of video games for consoles have been stuck in a rut.
The launch of the latest game in the Grand Theft Auto franchise pushed up sales for the 12 weeks to the end of September 29 per cent year on year, according to figures from Kantar, the market research group. Before that, sales of video games from retailers had declined, year on year, every quarter for the past five years.
Fiona Keenan, strategic insight director at Kantar, said the games industry had suffered from the a lack of new consoles coming on to the market. "Some gamers are becoming a bit disengaged – so it's great that this happened," said Ms Keenan. The release of Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are expected to boost games sales over Christmas.
"We think the consoles that are coming, which are aimed at core gamers, will inject a bit of life into the industry," said Ms Keenan.
GTA V became the fastest selling game of all time when it came out last month, breaking the record set by Call of Duty last year. The game – which lets players go on a violent crime spree – cost a record £170m to make. The gamble, however, paid off for developer Rockstar Games. It received rave reviews and had sales of $ 800m.
The success of the game came despite the rise of cheap and cheerful mobile-based games, such as Candy Crush Saga and Angry Birds. Supercell, which makes the popular mobile game Clash of Clans – where players build a village before conquering rivals in a cartoonish genocidal rampage – was this month valued at $ 3bn.
While Amazon dominates sales of video games in the UK, large grocers are catching up with the online retailer. Amazon has about a fifth of the market, but Tesco grew its market share by more than 5 percentage points to 17.1 per cent.
HMV's market share almost halved from 18 per cent to 10.6 per cent after the retailer fell into administration in January and closed a third of its stores, with Amazon, Asda and Tesco mopping up the extra customers.
The figures are based on a survey of 15,000 UK customers.
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