"The games industry has been incredibly effective in taking advantage of the potential of digital technology to offer new and compelling forms of entertainment."
Video games now account for more than half of the entire UK entertainment market, according to a new report from the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA).
The UK games industry was worth £3.86 billion ($4.85 billion) in 2018, which is more than double the combined £3.67 billion ($4.62 billion) value of the country's video and music industries.
Although the games market is now the biggest in UK entertainment, year-over-year sales of physical console and PC titles actually fell by 2.8 percent, while digital sales increased by 12.5 percent.
That upswing means digital sales generated 80.1 percent of the UK's video game revenue in 2018, although a lot of the biggest selling titles -- such as FIFA 19, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Black Ops 4 -- still did well at retail.
Overall, the ERA believes games came out on top because of the "sheer scale" of the industry, and noted that the video game market has now more than doubled in value since 2007.
"The games industry has been incredibly effective in taking advantage of the potential of digital technology to offer new and compelling forms of entertainment," commented ERA CEO, Kim Bayley. "Despite being the youngest of our three sectors, it is now by far the biggest."
You can find out more by checking out the ERA's full report right here. We've also taken the liberty of highlighting the UK's best selling physical console games of 2018 below.
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