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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. "
My game consumption was down to zero in February because all the local retailers were telling me that they'd be getting the Xbox 360 in regular stock come March. I put a permanent freeze on my PS2 game purchases as a result. Then March came and I bought the 360 and a couple games, with a couple more purchases likely to follow.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
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.
As a GC owner, I'm looking forward to Zelda Twilight Princess, but other than that, I can't think of any other game I'm supposed to be looking forward to or is making any kind of movement on the Excite-o-Meter. DNF? I gave up looking forward to that years and *years* ago. Shenmue 3 (yes, I played and loved 1 & 2)? Who knows if that will ever see the light of day.
/. have been along the same way; lots of retro talk, but no buzz (planted or not) about anything. Anything! We're in a stasis; the 360 is here but there's nothing exciting coming down the pipe, the PS3 has been delayed, taking whatever launch titles we were hoping for with it, and the Revolution...well, that thing is so nebulous I can't even form an opinion of it (controller notwithstanding).
The malaise stretches across the board: Nobody's talking about a new GTA game (GTA: Akron maybe?), no Dooms or Quakes or Half Lifes, or even Katamari Damarcys; no AAA titles to make me even inquisitive.
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In short, you (the game industry) got nothin', and now we all know it.
Down here in Australia, we're two weeks away from the Xbox 360 launch (23rd March it hits shelves). The console itself is going to set us back AU$649.00 and games are an average of AU$120 each.
One hundred and twenty fucking dollars? Give me a break. I had a hard enough time justifying a game at $80 or $90, but to bust out a three figure pricetag is just ridiculous. I've got a "good" job, my wife and I have plenty of disposable income and we're both quite enthusiastic gamers but we've just been priced out of the market quite frankly.
If people with a few grand a month to basically throw away are being put off by the cost of this "next gen" crap, what's that going to do for the guy who will need to spend two weeks of his income just to pick up the console and a couple of games?
I really do hope the 360 launch flops down here, it sure as hell deserves to.