After a couple of years of mainly bad news it's a welcome change of pace to report that the launches of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Kinect helped set a new record week for the industry in Britain. UKIE/GFK Chart-Track reports that last week grossed a massive £113.8m compared to the previous record set in week 52, 2008 (£107.6m).
The biggest story of the week was Call of Duty: Black Ops that sold more than two million copies, beating last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (1.8 million copies) with ease and generating a mind boggling £81.9m (estimated). Meanwhile Kinect had 8 of its 11 launch titles in the top 40 with Kinect Sports reaching fourth spot in the all formats chart.
Michael Rawlinson, Director General of video games trade body UKIE, added the following in the press release:
"The video games and interactive entertainment industry has already seen a great start to quarter 4 2010 and the success of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Microsoft's Kinect adds to this. The positive sales figures of titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops, new hardware launches like Kinect, the emergence of casual/mobile games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope and social networking games such as Farmville show that video games and other forms of interactive entertainment continue to be played by more people than ever - with 1 in 3 people in the UK now being gamers."
"Given the huge audiences for games on all formats, 2010 has been a year of unprecedented activity and focus. And with more video games than ever before being played, on an ever growing range of games consoles, PCs, mobile phones, mobile devices and internet enabled TVs, the industry has widened beyond all expectations and will continue to expand exponentially in 2011."
Given that Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit launches this week and with continued strong sales of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Kinect, we might see another record before the end of the year. Oh, and Gran Turismo 5 will make it out as well...