VIDEO games retailer GAME Digital saw a drop in sales over the Christmas trading period.

The company headquartered in Basingstoke reported sales falling 6.7 per cent in the 11 weeks to January 10.

It said increased promotional activity across the market had driven up hardware sales, but at lower average selling price and margin.

However, the company based in Telford Road, Houndmills, reported sales growth of 0.4 per cent and market growth of 1.6 per cent for the first 24 weeks of the financial year to January 10.

However, GAME said for the full financial year ending on August 1, 2015, underlying earnings would be broadly in line with last year’s figure of £51.3million.

Chief executive officer Martyn Gibbs, said: “Our market has experienced significant uptake of Xbox One and PlayStation 4 with both achieving the current installed base in half the time of their predecessor consoles in our core UK market.

“We have exceeded our expectations for the first year of the new console releases and are well placed to capitalise on over four million Xbox One and PlayStation 4 owners in our two major markets.

“Our strategy is to grow customer lifetime value and over the Christmas trading period, starting with Black Friday, we invested margin in offering gamers competitive product propositions through the bundling of games with hardware and reduced pricing, to recruit as many new generation customers as quickly as possible.

“We now have a huge customer base within the new formats, to sell both mint and pre-owned physical and digital content and accessories to over the long term.

“We have a solid line up of new physical and digital games being launched in our second half and have already secured a number of key exclusives.

“Our teams remain focused on delivering our unique specialist gaming experience for our customers.”