Britain can no longer claim to be the biggest market for games in Europe. Instead that top honour now belongs to Germany. Damn, and indeed, blast!

This galling revelation is just one of the factoids unleashed in a new report from Euro sales-watchers ‘Media Control GfK’. They don’t provide financial facts n’ figures, preferring instead to talk in terms of broad upward or downward trends. Alas it’s significantly downward where dear old Blighty is concerned – by all accounts UK game sales have declined by around 20% year-on-year. France and Spain have suffered similar shrinkages.

It’s not all bad news, though – the Portuguese market actually grew by 16% during the same timeframe, and Sweden, Holland and Italy all enjoyed modest growth. Meanwhile things in Germany were just, y’know, big.

Elsewhere the Media Control report reveals European gamers’ appetite for Wii Fit, which was the best-selling game in Germany, Austria and the UK and has posted large numbers in Italy, Sweden and France. In contrast the biggest sellers in far-flung Finland were two localised members of the SingStar family – ‘SuomiRock’ on PS2 and ‘SuomiPop’ for PS3. The Swedish variant, ‘SingStar Svenska Schlager Hits’ did very well too, we're told.

Wow, er, who knew...?