Music sales are down, movie takings are down, consumer spending is down...lucky for British retail, then, that game sales are on the up! In fact, they're so up that it's making everything else look good.

Data released today by Britain's Entertainment Retailers Association show that total entertainment sales - which combine the sales of DVDs, music and games - were up 4% from the same time last year. DVDs were up 1.9%, album sales were down 3.2%, while games, well, games were dragging everyone else's average up, sales 17% higher than in 2007 with a combined 82.8 million titles sold across the UK in 2008.

The leap has been mostly attributed to the Wii, though it'd be interesting to see how the PS3 contributed, since Blu-Ray sales were up 358% from 2007.

Wii boosts UK games sales, music resilient [Reuters]

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