A new report by the Entertainment Retailers Association has found that the video game industry is now worth approximately £3.86bn, making up 51.3 percent of the entire entertainment market in the UK.

This is despite the fact that the console and PC games market actually shrunk in 2018; but according to the report the sheer scale of the industry means it is still more than video and music combined.

Thanks to digital sales, which grew by 12.5 percent last year, the games market has more than doubled in value since 2007, combined with the release of three hugely popular games: Fifa 19 (which sold nearly 2m physical copies), Red Dead Redemption 2 (which sold 1.8m copies) and Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 (selling 1.2m copies). The next highest selling game, Marvel's Spider-Man, sold just 677,000 copies.

Chief executive of ERA, Kim Bayley said: "The games industry has been incredibly effective in taking advantage of the potential of digital technology to offer new and compelling forms of entertainment. Despite being the youngest of our three sectors, it is now by far the biggest."

It's worth noting that these figures do not take into consideration free-to-play games like the hugely popular Fortnite, which has 200 million global players.

Without a doubt, digital sales now dictate whether or not an industry is successful. 80.1 percent of games revenues, 72.3 percent of video and 71.3 percent of music sales are via digital means.

However, physical editions of games are still vital. FIFA 19, which sold 2.5m units in total, had three-quarters of its sales from physical copies. For a game to fulfil its potential, the ERA says that it still needs "the reach and convenience of physical formats."