FIFA 08 wins High Street Christmas

By Robert Purchese Published 15 January, 2008

GAME makes loads of dough.

FIFA 08 was the most popular title on the shelves of GAME stores this Christmas, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

It helped boost store sales by a whopping 77 percent for the six week period ending 12th January, along with sterling efforts from The Simpsons Game, Call of Duty 4, Assassin's Creed and Pro Evo 2008.

Other titles singled out as "exceptional" performers were Mario & Sonic at the Olympics and the original Brain Training.

GAME, which acquired other High Street retailer Gamestation recently, reckons 2008 will be a good year as well. It's expecting profits to be up at around GBP 73 million this year - compared to GBP 29.5 million in 2007. That's a lot of PSP screen protectors.

"The current range and quality of products in the market is unprecedented," said Peter Lewis, chairman at GAME.

"We are confident that consumer demand for our products will remain strong as we approach the March anniversary of the launch of the Sony PS3, and that the supply of the Nintendo Wii and DS Lite consoles will continue to improve.

"Next year the existence of five successful hardware formats and the evident broadening consumer appeal should stimulate further growth," he concluded.

Raining cats and dogs out there, but GamesIndustry.biz has shelter and a news fire burning with fact.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (14) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • aldo_14 #1 4 years ago

    It's a shame the range and quality of shops selling the ranged and quality products is abysmal.....

  • Talha #2 4 years ago

    Please, new ed, stop the LAME lines peddling gamesindustry.biz and just make a simple link. They are, incredibly, worse than 'for further details please head to..."

    I know I know - I was the one who hated them the most.


    AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGH

  • BBIAJ #3 4 years ago

    The GamesIndustry.Biz taglines are legend!

  • alimokrane #4 4 years ago

    I agree with Talha .... It is the most annoying thing ever! if what you'll do is copy news from over there then, go ahead and close this site down. Seriously, Tom get to work on this! :p

  • wyli #5 4 years ago

    The tag lines always make me chuckle. Leave 'em be I say.

  • captainrentboy #6 4 years ago

    aldo_14, I resent that statement, I work for the glorious Game group and I'm not abysmal, infact I'm fantastic.
    In all seriousness, a lot of folk bash Game stores, but they're not ALLLL bad, there are some decent ones out there that even have clued up staff working there, mine for example, so I guess they're just largely shite with the odd golden nugget.
    It's as stereotypical as saying the vast majority of Gamestion stores stink like BO, and you're only made to feel welcome in one if you're a 16-18 yr old Goth/Emo who loves RPGs....

  • Zomoniac #7 4 years ago

    According to the news on 5 Live this morning Game made 32% more on like-for-like sales than last Christmas, just about the only company in the UK to have a significant sales increase. A shame, I was so happy a couple of years ago when their profits were going into freefall. What were people buying though? I know it's been a great winter for games, but with 360 hardware sales stalling, PS3 still not taking off and Wii and DS almost impossible to get hold of, nobody will have been buying their bundle-forced rip-off own brand accessories, which is where they make all their money.

  • Toothball #8 4 years ago

    I like the tag lines too.

  • tobsen #9 4 years ago

    When will corporate execs ever understand that directly addressing customers as "consumers" is stupid and insulting?

  • stevencole7 #10 4 years ago

    I know PES 2008 was not the best improvement, but I still think FIFA 08 plays crap. The players feel like there on rails and there seems to be a delay when shooting etc etc. I suppose the real names, teams always help.........
    Edited by 1 at 15/01/08 @ 14:23

  • gizmo #11 4 years ago

    I've always been in the PES camp, but this year Fifa08 deserves to have sold well. Great game.

  • DB2k #12 4 years ago

    well it was discounted to 20-25 quid everywhere I looked. funny tho.. this year its the better game of the two so if you like footy games.. go get it

  • rik-sik #13 4 years ago

    I worked at game for 4 a while last year lol alot of effort got put into running the shop that i didnt have a clue about b4 i started workin ther, the store i worked at pulled over 2 mill in its financial year which is crazy i think!

  • secombe #14 4 years ago

    Not surprising that EA games dominated GAME sales really, in our local stores EA have their own section (in a very prominent place) which rivals the Wii and DS sections for size.