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2005 Game Sales Set Record
Despite a Holiday slump, 2005 game sales hit all-time highs. Gamasutra reports: "The growth was largely driven through an expanding market for handheld systems. Previously dominated by Nintendo's Game Boy series, 2005 saw the market expand to comfortably support three handhelds: the existing Game Boy Advance, Nintendo's 'third pillar' in the Nintendo DS, and Sony's PlayStation Portable. Portable software sales rose to $1.4 billion, a rise of 42 percent over 2004. The Game Boy Advance, due to its longer lifespan and greater install base, still took the majority of the handheld game market, claiming 52 percent of portable game sales."
iirc in 2005 I bought the least number of games since 1995.
It wasn't a good year, not really a lot of great games were released.
2006 is going to be different.
You can't blame game companies. When tomb raider sold a gazillion installments game execs must have thought they had found the golden goose. (I do not want you to fantasize about Lara Croft lying golden eggs you sick pervert)
Now games do not have to be innovative, many GBA DS games are not really THAT innovative BUT you have to add something new or a really big improvement for the gaming public to warm up.
Oh well seems all the doom stories one way or another were overrated. Again. So games are dying stories are out for the rest of the month. What can we use instead. BSD old buddy, how is that cough? Sun you look a bit under the weather.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yep. I don't need every game to be a Katamari Damacy. It just has to have some new energy and thinking behind it a new way to interact. If you think about it, that's what 'game' means. If you can boil you're game down to FPS or TPS, then you've essentially got a derivative game with a new story. While this is all fine and good, it get's old. That's where FEAR and RE4 come in.
As to the RTS, yep I'll take StarCraftDS any day, spruce it up a bit. I'll take the Myst suggestion too, as I was preoccupied with other stuff to play those.
Now to the marketing execs reading this thread brought to the by their research teams: This does not mean rehash everything and anything.
-- I have fans? Wow.
2005 Console gaming sets record. not one mention of pc games in it.
If it weren't for the extremely strong sales of the Nintendo DS and the launch of the Sony PSP, 2005 would've been a horrible year, so the analysts' concerns were completely warranted. The home console market is going stagnant because of increased prices for consumers and a lack of original content. I don't see how that is even disputable...sales of home console hardware and software was dismal in 2005, even considering that the current generation is ending. It seems like only Nintendo has figured that out, which is why 2006 will bring a dramatically new product in the Revolution. If affordable enough for non-traditional gamers, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Revolution carried the industry in 2006, 2007, and beyond. Only time will tell which direction the industry is truly headed.
Check NintendoPlayers.com for weekly industry sales numbers, information about the Revolution, and the direction of the industry once the console launches.
I know this will sound fanboyish, but without the DS and its strong sales (along with the GBA), the average would have been a decline. The PSP does not exactly have a strong software line-up. And console sales have been dwindling.
From the article:
"Total sales for the year were over $10.5 billion, an improvement of six percent over 2004's $9.9 billion and narrowly edging out 2002's $10.2 billion."
This does not mean there are more customers now than before. It simply means people are paying more.
The PSP is more than $200 (with $50 games). The Xbox 360 is $400 (with its games $60). And the DS costs more than a gamecube.
Development costs are going up everywhere (except for the DS). So this 'extra money' will probably not counter the increased costs it takes for new software.
In 2006, the PS3 will cost at least around $500 with around $60 price for games. And PS3 games will not be cheap to develop.
The measuring stick for the games industry needs to be actual gamers, rather than how much money is being spent. If everything costed twice as much and there were less gamers, the article would still say, "Games market had grown!" when, in fact, it actually shrunk.
The console biz is booming. We are in the process of ramping up for the PS3 and Revolution.
Our PS2 stuff is flying off the shelves along with the amazing rate PS2 hardware is still selling. And it hasn't even dropped to 99 bucks yet.
Yet I have people trying to express their sympathy to me about how bad things are because of the fucking 360 and how rough it must be to be in the console biz.
Fuck you Microsoft. What should be a time of excitement for the whole console world on the soon to be arriving PS3 and Rev hardware is ruined because Microsoft has decided to waste everyone's time once again with another futile and retarded entry in the console market.
Begone idiots from Redmond!
The Game Boy Advance, due to its longer lifespan and greater install base, still took the majority of the handheld game market, claiming 52 percent of portable game sales.
So if the PSP is dominating the handheld market with its distant third, does that mean the Gamecube is dominating the home console market with its distant third?
Just curious, because whenever we talk about the PSP, we always say that it's, uh... dominating the market. Even though its selling less, has less games, and is making less money. *cough*
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
This is where a lot of the RIAA and MPAA's lost sales have gone. They're putting out mostly crap so people are finding other ways to entertain themselves.
If you added up the total sales for Games, Music and Movies, the total amount probably hasn't changed much in the last ten years.
Actual money being spent is a useful statistic for the game companies. Actual number of gamers doesn't really help a lot, and in fact could look more damaging to companies
For example: Sony's much touted 100-million PS2 units. While that sounds like a lot (and it is), you have to think how many of those are secondary units in a household or replacements for a dead one. I know I'm on my second PS2, because the first croaked and I'm certainly not re-buying all my games. A 100-million units doesn't necessarily mean 100-million gamers. OTOH, one unit in a household could be played more several people. How do you measure?
Or how about Xbox Live, where only about 10% of customers paid for it. Last I heard, even the new 360 unit only has about 10% "active" customers, and even the "free" Silver Subscription is only being tried by half the new 360 customers. With all the online content Microsoft seems to be pushing, a 10% attraction rate doesn't look that great to anybody. A better number is how much money people are spending once on Xbox Live.
So, number of gamers doesn't really help the industry and actually makes it look worse than it possibly might be. The important thing is attachment rate to systems and how much money are these folks spending on new titles. (Used titles are the bane of the makers because you get the game and they don't get a cut.)
{ - Generic Guy - }
"The growth was largely driven through an expanding market for handheld systems."
Maybe it's just sloppy language, but I think this is mistaking a result for a cause. The (revenue) growth may have been MAINLY in the handheld categories, but it was driven by:
- Hollywood failing to generate a single new idea for the past 3(?) years. Despite the lack of ideas, movie tickets are now somewhere just south of $10 each, making a "movie night" for a family of 4, plus dinner at a moderate restaurant, popcorn, pop = roughly a hundred-dollar evening. Normal families can't really afford this as a 'routine' entertainment anymore.
- Each of the major-league sports is riven with controversy, usually because the thuggish behavior of it's whinging prima-donna multigajillionaire stars. Simultaneously, despite ever-increasing salaries, performance (san steroids) in major league sports has never been more disappointing. Likewise free-agency and insanely high ticket prices have utterly destroyed any sort of hometown team loyalty any fans ever felt.
- In my region, the increasing prevalence of "outdoor" diseases such as "bird flu" and Lyme Disease means that kids are spending ever more time indoors when possible.
- Finally, 2-income households and parents working 50, 60, even 70 hours per week just to make ends meet means that children are more and more left on their own. Better to buy them a video game system and KNOW that they are being amused relatively safely, than to leave them to their own devices and god-only-knows what they'll get up to.
Seems a relatively logical trend, to me.
-Styopa
Actual money being spent is a useful statistic for the game companies. Actual number of gamers doesn't really help a lot, and in fact could look more damaging to companies
So we cannot have reports that may be damaging to companies? If the industry is lying to itself, then it is in worse shape than we thought.
For example: Sony's much touted 100-million PS2 units. While that sounds like a lot (and it is), you have to think how many of those are secondary units in a household or replacements for a dead one... How do you measure?
Sony only releases the 'shipped' numbers, never the 'sold' numbers. If game journalists would stop being lapdogs and insist Sony cough up the actual sold numbers, that would help.
Measuring the number of households playing games would be more useful. The 'growth' of the games industry has not been to MORE people, but only to the same ones. The 'growth' has been repeat sales and multiple consoles for a household. The number of households that have game consoles have not increased in America since the NES, especially when you adjust for population growth. This is why the Atari founder asked, "Where did all the gamers go?"
You use more than one measurement, of course. It is ridiculous to simply say the 'games industry' is growing by leaps and bounds merely based on money spent especially when the industry's products have gotten more expensive. Why not measure health in many measurements to get a more accurate picture?
With all the online content Microsoft seems to be pushing, a 10% attraction rate doesn't look that great to anybody. A better number is how much money people are spending once on Xbox Live.
You seem interested in ignoring certain numbers to make the industry appear rosier than it is. Sure, report the numbers of how much money is spent on Xbox Live. But also report the percentage of people using it.
So, number of gamers doesn't really help the industry and actually makes it look worse than it possibly might be.
So you admit the aim of these reports is to 'help' the industry? Wouldn't it be most helpful for the industry to be honest about itself?
The important thing is attachment rate to systems and how much money are these folks spending on new titles.
What does this matter if the titles and systems become more expensive? All it shows is that the same (or less) gamers replaced their older systems with more expensive ones. This report doesn't say that the number of sales has increased, only there is more money spent.
What you are telling us is that not only is this report useless, it is a PR piece for the games industry to look better than it actually is.