

In order to keep up with high demand for Space Invaders, Taito licensed distribution rights to Midway Manufacturing. A major breakthrough for video games came with the 1978 release of Taito's shoot 'em up game Space Invaders, which began the golden age of arcade video games. Atari's Breakout (1976) later drew a significant following, but enthusiasm for the game had also waned shortly after. Pong and other similar sports video game clones became popular in British arcades up until their popularity declined a year later in 1974, after which video games were dismissed as a fad. Arcade video games arrived with the 1973 release of Pong by Atari, Inc. Up until the 1970s, British amusement arcades typically had mechanical arcade games, electro-mechanical games and pinball machines. Ĭhristopher Strachey's Draughts, completed around 1951, is the first verifiable video game to run on a general purpose computer, developed at the British National Physical Laboratory.Įarly arcade video games (1970s–1980s) Wider-spread use of computers for general purpose applications became more common in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The UK's involvement in World War II also pushed forward advances in computing to help decipher enemy messages, such as the Colossus computer, which further helped pushed forward the drive to improve computers after the war at several academic institutions, including at Manchester University and Cambridge University. As computers transitioned to electronic and digital elements in the mid-20th century, Alan Turing established the foundation of modern computer science and the concept of artificial intelligence. The United Kingdom had been a key participant in the history of computing, with notable figures like Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace in the 18th and 19th century creating a fundamental computing device, the mechanical-based difference engine, and a privative programming language, respectively. Ĭhristopher Strachey's Draughts is the first verifiable video game to run on a general purpose computer. The United Kingdom's video game industry is estimated to employ 20,000 people. The organisations responsible for rating video games in the UK are the British Board of Film Classification and PEGI, the latter of which was elected to rate British games in 2009 and subsequently began doing so in July 2012. One of the United Kingdom's greatest contributions to the worldwide gaming industry was the 1982 release of the ZX Spectrum home computer.
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The best-selling video game series made in the UK is Grand Theft Auto (primary developed by Rockstar North in Edinburgh, Scotland), which has sold over 150 million copies as of September 2013 the most recent instalment Grand Theft Auto V became the fastest-selling video game of all time by making $815.7 million (£511.8 million) in sales worldwide during the first 24 hours of the game's sale. Many major video game franchises are developed in the UK, including Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider, Burnout, LittleBigPlanet, Wipeout and Dirt, making UK the third largest producer of video game series behind Japan and the United States. In 2017, the number of players was estimated at 32.4 million people. The UK video game market was worth £5.7 billion ( $7.6 billion) in 2018, a 10% increase over the previous year. The United Kingdom is Europe's second largest video game market after Germany, and the sixth largest in the world. Overview of video games in the United Kingdom
