Wii will, Wii will Rock You

Music games are "burgeoning in the UK, ringing up £95.1m sales in 2009. This is not quite as good as it sounds - sales were £107.7m in 2008.

Ubisoft's Just Dance for Nintendo Wii was Leader of the Pack, outselling all other music games in the year. Activision's Guitar Hero series took six places in the top ten. Take That's Singstar also made the top ten, as did The Beatles: Rockband.

Pipped to the top of the chart in its week of release by ‘Guitar Hero 5’,  The Beatles: Rockband was a "global smash", says the BPI, a UK music industry association, with an estimated 1.7m copies sold worldwide from September to the end of 2009, including more than 1m tracks downloaded.

Canned quote from BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor:

"The most encouraging trend is the growth of a market for music track purchases direct to consoles to use with existing games and peripherals.  Rock Band now has over a thousand tracks available to buy, and more than 60 million have been downloaded worldwide in the last two years."

All told, 4.1 million games were sold in the UK in 2009, about 6.4 per cent of all games sales, according to the BPI, which compiled the figures.

Its findings are published in the BPI Statistical Handbook 2010, It can be yours for £70. ®