Nintendo were the sixth largest publisher by market share in the United Kingdom last year, attributed to 6.6 percent of physical software units sold at retailers across the country.
That positioned them ahead of their platform holder rivals Microsoft (5.9 percent) and Sony (5.7 percent), but demonstrated the weight that third-party publishers continue to carry in driving their consoles. Electronic Arts comfortably secured the largest market share (19.5 percent), with Activision Blizzard in second (13.1 percent) and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment placing third (9.5 percent).
Such calculations were shared in an analysis piece published by MCV, which revealed that Mario Kart 8 had outpaced sales of every new game that Nintendo published across the year. The anti-grav racer was alarmingly the only Wii U exclusive to appear in the top 50 physical games, a list that is heavily dominated by PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and which notably saw Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation Vita and PC entirely absent.
Broken down by console instead, the Nintendo 3DS scored fifth place having accounted for a 4.8 percent market share – Wii U (3.5 percent), Wii (1 percent), and Nintendo DS (0.7 percent) helping to boost the company’s overall traction. But unsurprisingly it is the PlayStation 4 that was the dominant force, having alone been attributed to a 36.3 percent market share – continuing to outpace the Xbox One which sat at 29.7 percent.
It’s clear that Nintendo have work to do to regain ground in what was traditionally a strong market for them. That will hopefully come when Nintendo NX strikes retail, which can’t come soon enough given that the company’s games were entirely absent from the UK software chart this week…
