UPDATE: GamePolitics is now stating that the report from Media Control GFK is wrong. Citing an update from gamesindustry.biz, it looks like someone over at GFK was simply mistaken, and not for the first time.

From GI.biz:

"Gfk Chart-Track in the UK has contacted GamesIndustry.biz to admit that the press release it issued earlier today had been written using incorrect data. The company is expected to release a correction shortly. It is understood that Germany is not a bigger games market than the UK.

This is the second time in as many weeks that GfK Chart-Track data has been publicly questioned. Last week, Nintendo contacted GamesIndustry.biz following confusion over UK sales figures for the first half of the year."

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A new report from Media Control GFK International, which is a European version of the American NPD group, has released a report which finds that Germany is now the number one European sales region, based on a country-by-country basis. This marks the first time, at least in the current console generation, that the top spot has not been occupied by the United Kingdom. The report cites a twenty percent decline in British software sales for the first half of 2009 as the reason for the shift.

A spokesperson for Media Control GFK attributed the shift thusly, "the decline [is] mostly due to a lack of new-released blockbuster games in the UK in 2009." Now, i'm not sure how accurate that is, since the best-selling game in Germany for the first half of the year was Wii Fit.

This is the kind of story that the German government should really pay attention to. There is no doubt that if the proposed ban on violent games passes into law, it will not be long before another country supplants Germany for the top spot. And with the world economy being what it is, it's more important than ever for countries to support the sectors of their economies that are working.

[Source]