February Game Sales Flop

Some financial news from the gaming industry today; NPD Analysts predict that game sales for February will be much lower than hoped-for, down eleven percent from last year. Take-Two Interactive, the publisher for studios Rockstar and Firaxis, posted a loss of $29.1 Million in their first quarter, which ended at the end of January. Not everything was doom and gloom. Newly linked Bioware/Pandemic did great in 2005, with more than 28 million games sold. From that 1up piece: "Neither company has laid out much of their plans for the next-generation consoles, though BioWare's brief showing of their planned Xbox 360 trilogy Mass Effect suggests the companies are poised to be just as ambitious on the coming consoles as ever before. "

Comments

MMO effect?

[__aaitqo8496]

I know that console and PC gamers tend to be different breed, but could the huge success of WoW be a contributing factor to declining revenue in the game industry?

Blizzard's intent is to continue thier current subscription by introducing long-lasting content. With 6 million users, does anyone else think that this could have a definitive effect on other games (both PC and console).

It's not called Warcrack for nothing.

Re:MMO effect?

[__aaitqo8496]

Even prescribing to your suggestion of 5%, that's still a significant amount amount of revenue a company could lose out one. Let's do a little math:

WoW active subscriber base: 6 million
Percent of hardcore players: 5%
Total active hardcore players: 300,000
Cost of a game: $40 (this is very conservative)
Total potential lost revenue: $12 million

If we increase the cost of a game to $50 (a much more realistic amount), the revenue jumps to $15 million. However, I don't think the cost of a game is really a variable here. I think the real problem lies in the 5% assumption. While this may be accurate for those that are hardcore players (and do not much else), another very large subset of players falls into the "doesn't play much else" category: casuals. Why? Becasue they're casual. They only play an hour or two each night, maybe not every night. This is typically because they have additional real life obligations. This would suggest they don't have time to play yet another video game.

I think the percentage of World of Warcraft players that don't play other games on a regular basis is much higher than 5%.

Thoughts? Questions? Comments?

March

[the computer guy nex]

March will be an absolute monster

Fight Night Round 3, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Burnout, College hoops 2k6 for 360, etc.

Gee, never saw this coming.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if this has anything to do with cramming every single AAA game title into November's release schedule?

It's like the other 11 months of the year don't matter.

Game Overload, Time Restrictions

[hattig]

I've got too many games from last year (and before) that I haven't got around to playing seriously.

Why would I buy more now?

Let me get through those games, or at least get my money's worth from them. Then I'll think about new games. By that time the Revolution will be out anyway, and I'll only have time for games that provide immediate fun.

Re:It was my fault, sorry.

[keltor]

My guy at EB told me a little story ...

The reason they aren't getting that many copies of each 360 game ... cause they didn't sell well enough in the first place.

Steam

[glenrm]

I bought Half-Life 2 through Steam and paid for a month of City of Heroes. Does NPD track this these kinds of purchases?