Mobile Most Popular Platform for UK Studios, but Console and PC Studios Employ the Lion's Share of Developers

LONDON, August 30, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

TIGA, the network for video games developers and digital publishers and the trade association representing the video games industry, today released new data showing that while the largest proportion of UK studios made games for mobile, studios focussed on console and pc games employed the most development staff in the UK.  

In the year ending March 2016, 46 per cent of UK studios were primarily focused on mobile platforms, but employed just 20 per cent of development staff. Conversely, 36 per cent were focused mainly on PC and employed 26 per cent of development staff. 14 per cent of studios were focused on console, but these studios employed the lion's share of the development workforce (45 per cent). TIGA released the following information from its forthcoming annual report into the state of the UK video games industry Making Games in the UK Today: 2016.

• 46 per cent of UK studios were primarily focused on the mobile platform category in 2016 (down from 49 per cent in 2013 and 48 per cent in 2014).
• PC (comprising retail and online PC games, social network games and massively multiplayer online games) was the primary platform category of choice for 36 per cent of UK studios (compared to 37 per cent in 2014 and 34 per cent in 2013).
• Interest in console platforms (comprising console and handheld retail and download categories) remains mostly confined to larger studios with almost 14 per cent of UK studios focused on developing for console and handheld platforms (compared to 13 per cent in 2014, 16 per cent in 2013 and 23 per cent in 2012). Nevertheless, British developers are still investing in consoles, and console studios still employ nearly half the UK development workforce.
• The fastest growing new games category is virtual reality (VR), with 20 development companies primarily working on VR. Although this is a small proportion of the total companies (2 per cent), it is now the same proportion of total companies as massively multiplayer online games (MMOG), although MMOG companies employ far more development staff (727 developers versus 245 respectively).

Dr Richard Wilson, TIGA CEO, said: