It’s a good time to be a console developer in the UK. Not only do you get to charge higher prices on your consoles and games, delay games for lengthy amounts of time (Nintendo especially) and generally screw over the market, but now it is blatantly clear that the British people will take that beating and still fork over their money. Then again, what else are they going to do? Life without gaming is no life at all.

The ELSPA has announced today that the install base for console owners in UK has doubled since last year, making the gaming industry, in their opinion, the most important industry in the creative industry sector in the UK. The installed base of consoles in the UK has doubled from 8.8 million in September of last year to 17.3 million in September of this year. By the end of the year the figures are estimated to rise to 21 million in thanks to those holiday rushes. These results don’t even take into account second generation systems like the PS2 meaning a whole lorryload (still not a word) of this generation’s systems have been sold!

The big winner overall here is, of course, Nintendo who brought in the lionsshare of money by adding 2.5 million new Wii owners and 3.3 million new DS owners. Sony and Microsoft aren’t exactly slacking off with a million installed users added to their counts, but that is still 1.5 million less than the Wii. Just in case you’re wondering, the PSP went from 2.2 million to 2.9 million, which isn’t stellar but still promising. In short the study, with results supplied by The Game Group, shows that people in the UK like videogames. Goodonya.