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U.S. Video Game Sales Down 10% in May

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the stiff-upper-lip dept.

kukyfrope writes "After a strong 15.5% increase in U.S. video game sales in April 2006, May has gone the other way, posting sales numbers 10% below those of May 2005. Xbox 360 game sales and console sales alone slumped 37% and 25% respectively, but despite these declines, annual year-to-date game sales are only down 5%. Even so, analysts are not surprised, citing the transition from current-gen to next-gen systems as a dip in the market. 'We expect U.S. video game software dollar sales to decline 4% in 2006. We think that the transition is only partially complete, and believe that several bumps in the road [still] lie ahead,' said Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter."

5 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Discretionary Spending by Mr.Sharpy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think we should expect to see more numbers like this in the near future, especially in entertainment sectors. Things are getting tight in peoples' budgets due to various reasons, but especially because of high energy prices. One of the first places people look to save money is in their entertainment budget (whether they think of it consciously as that or not) by cutting down on eating out, movies, music and GAMES. After that they will start to cut into other more direct quality of life areas of their budgets.

  2. The "missing" gamers are playing WoW? by AHumbleOpinion · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Are the "missing" gamers too busy playing World of Warcraft to go to the store and purchase something else? Is there a correlation between ever increasing WoW subscription rates and declining retail game sales? ;-)

  3. What came out in those months? by SuperMog2002 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The question is, what big hit came out in May of last year, or what came out in April of this year? Major hits don't come out every month, nor do they come out on the same months each year, and they have a huge effect on monthly sales. Simply seeing month over month numbers without this information doesn't tell you much about how the industry as a whole is doing.

    --
    Sunwalker Dezco for Warchief in 2016
  4. oblivion by schwal · · Score: 2, Insightful

    once all the 360 people bought oblivion, they spent 80 hours on it and didn't buy anything else.

    --
    -schwal "Hanging is too good for punners, they should be drawn and quoted"
  5. Re:SORRY by Dolly_Llama · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm still playing the game I bought last January: World of Warcraft.

    I think the sales of new titles has a lot to due to WoW.

    --

    Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan