In the UK total sales of software, hardware, and accessories totaled £2.52 billion last year, which according to CVG is down thirteen percent compared to 2010. Sales of boxed games accounted for £1.42 billion, which was a drop by seven percent compared to the previous year.

According to UKIE who provide the data this was better than earlier forecasts for the year, which saw consumer spending on leisure activities and goods, come under strain. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was unsurprisingly the biggest selling game of 2011.

Console hardware sales revenue totaled £646 million during 2011 with gaming accessories accounting for £453 million in revenue last year, which is a fall by seventeen percent. Motion control devices such as the Microsoft Kinect made up around eleven percent of total unit sales, and 27 percent of revenue.

Despite the falls across the board there were still some great achievements according to UKIE chairman Andy Payne.MW3 hit the game charts in week 45 and generated £83 million in revenue in the first five days, selling two million units.

2011 also saw the release of the Nintendo 3DS that despite getting off to a slow start began selling well following a price cut. There were also some other big game releases such as Battlefield 3 and Skyrim, which would have helped boost revenues.

This year we will see the launch of the PS Vita and Nintendo’s Wii U along with some big game releases such as GTA 5, and Halo 4. These figures compare to the Japanese market that saw a fall of eight percent with Mario Kart 7 and the 3DS topping the sales charts.

Are you surprised that revenue dropped so much considering the games that were released last year?

The patch is pretty similar to those that have been released already for the PS3 and PC, which offers a variety of fixes and changes to both the campaign and multiplayer part of the game. Some of these include a fix for crashing during level load in SP, and to stop crashing happening when shutting down levels.

If you now get killed after respawning you will no longer hear bullet sounds passing around you, and the issue during a melee showing a gun instead of your knife has been fixed. Missing blood effects on a kill shot have been added, and the issue with disconnecting the controller during Gamer Profile sign out animation would mean the game to soft lock has been sorted.

There have been many improvements to the multiplayer part of the game as well, which include first person weapon sounds issues being fixed. If you get killed while trying to throw a hand grenade it will now drop to the ground. Spawn protection is now thought to work while in Conquest, which basically means you won’t respawn close to your enemies. This should also be the case in TDM and SQDM as well.

If you are using the EOD bot and get killed you should no longer respawn without any weapons, and problems with health bars not displaying the correct health when using EOD bots has also been fixed. Several Xbox 360 specific crashes and freezes have also been corrected as well as improvements with shadow rendering.

This is just a tiny fraction of the improvements for the Xbox 360 version, which can be seen in full here. Have you downloaded the update yet?

However, if you are living in the UK and happen to be a fan of popular publishing PSM3 (PlayStation 3 Magazine), you have may have noticed an interesting poll that they are running on their Facebook page, in which they have posted the results of a question they were asking on which title gamers were more excited about between Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3.

The results were in largely in favor of Battlefield 3 with 245 voters choosing the game developed by EA DICE, while only 52 voters opted to choose the third game in Infinity Ward’s successful Modern Warfare franchise. The poll is still ongoing as we speak, but it looks like Battlefield 3 will be a standout winner.

But does this survey reflect the overall opinion by gamers that Battlefield 3 is simply going to be the better game out of the two? Modern Warfare 3 fans may think this is a one-off result as their game will still end up being better then BF3 in their opinion, while obviously BF3 fans will feel the same as well. It’s all a matter of opinion of course, as both gamers offer a different gameplay experience which works for both parties.

For example, critics may label Modern Warfare 3 as the same repetitive, arcade-style gameplay, but it’s a formula which gamers have come to love and the same can be said for Battlefield 3 too perhaps offering a more tactical-based gameplay experience.

What are your thoughts on this poll conducted by the magazine? Do you think it’s a fair reflection of how gamers truthfully feel about both gamers away from the media, or do you have a different opinion?