If times are tough in the wider global economy nobody’s bothered to tell UK gamers, whose appetite for pixellated entertainment has resulted in a record-breaking and hugely encouraging high.

How high? According to the Entertainment and Leisure Software Association (ELSPA) our combined spend on games and the machines to play ‘em on has totalled a dizzying £4.03 Billion. Blimey!

Breaking things down a little further we bought a grand total of 82.8 million pieces of software in 2008, which equates to £1.9 Billion in terms of revenues. That’s a 23% improvement on 2007 and, according to ELSPA number-crunchers, is more than double the total earnings over the past five years. On top of that hardware sales topped a cool £1.422 Billion. The huge growth in the casual games market accounts for a goodly slice of the action on both fronts, says ELSPA.

Okay, even without a calculator you’ll see that there’s a Billion missing there somewhere, so either we spent it on pads, Hi-Def cables for our massive tellies, vibra-sonic gaming furniture and other sundry accoutrements or somebody at ELSPA or the BBC, who broke this story, has made a typing error. Either way, hooray for us and our recession-conquering purchasing habits!