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US Videogame Sales Have Biggest Drop In 9 Years
alphadogg writes "The recession appears to have finally caught up with the video game market. Sales of video game hardware and software were down by around one-third in June compared to the same month last year. After initially showing positive growth as the US slid into recession, the latest figures mark the fourth month of declines and the largest year-on-year decline in almost 9 years. 'The first half of the year has been tough largely due to comparisons against a stellar first half performance last year, but still, this level of decline is certainly going to cause some pain and reflection in the industry,' said Anita Frazier, a games analyst with NPD Group. She added, 'The size of the decline could also point to consumers deferring limited discretionary spending until a big event (must-have new title, hardware price cut) compels them to spend.' The entire video game market in the US was worth $1.2 billion in June, down 31 percent from the same period last year, according to NPD Group."
With 1.5 million forced house-sales in the US one should be able to imagine that people have less money to spend on more critical things, like food. So I am not really suprised with this.
Heh, I wait till Newegg or GoGamer has them for $25 or less or if Impuse has a good sale..
There is a war going on for your mind.
I agree that the piracy card will be played and that we'll see some more fire aimed at Gamestop and that darned used games market. I find myself playing some old games right now... Grand Theft Auto III, Aerobiz Supersonic and Third World War. Pedantic... but the word you want is "cue". I don't understand why this is confusing... these words are not homophones. I suppose it all boils down to overthinking while typing.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
And on June 29th, 2008 was Guitar Hero: Aerosmith....
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Didn't treat us PC gamers like Dog Shit we would be buying more games. I can say that while I once looked forward to buying the "big gun" games (Far Cry, Bioshock FEAR,etc) at release I know refuse to buy any game that isn't in the bargain bin.
Why? Well besides the fact that they started charging $60+ a pop which is just insane in a dead economy, the biggest reason is this: I am using a 64bit OS, namely XP X64. Despite all the horror stories about incompatibility I have found even my old Win9X era software runs quite well in 64bit. Of course with 4Gb of DDR2 going for around $40 and graphics cards with 1Gb of RAM going for $50 32bit simply didn't cut it for me anymore. So what is the problem you say? Well, while the games all run beautifully, with nary a glitch or hiccup, the &^%$^&%$&^%$ DRM doesn't work in 64bit!!!! See how in the video above how the poor guy sticks the retail disc in the drive only to get "Please insert disc in drive"? That is pretty much every stinking game for me. Meanwhile the pirates get the games prerelease with no DRM and no bullshit. And they wonder why sales are down? Maybe if you would quit kicking me in the balls I might buy more of your damned product!!!!
So now thanks to their wonderful DRM I simply don't buy release games any longer. I have found so many companies are putting out alpha quality code that even if you can find a crack at release often there will be a patch released quickly that you simply have to have to actually use the game, and who knows how long it will be until the patch is cracked? So instead I wait until the game hits the $30 and below shelves, with $20 and below being the magic number for impulse buys. I have found by that time they have released pretty much all the patches they are gonna so I can just Alcohol the game onto DVD along with the patches and crack required to actually play the product I PAID FOR so that when I feel like going back and playing again I have all the required files in one place.
Maybe we will get lucky and this recession will teach game companies to stop acting like giant douches with crap like Spore style limited installs, DRM that is nastier than any trojan (and if you have ever had to clean a PC that is infected with Starforce+Safedisc+SecuROM you know how nasty they can be) and in general treating their paying customers like dog shit who should be grateful for any alpha quality code they deem worthy of dumping on us. Sadly instead they will just scream "Piracy!" and treat us paying customers even more like shit, probably screw the console gamers with nasty DRM tricks that kill Gamestop, and generally spit in the faces of those that actually try to support them by buying their products. Meanwhile the pirates will laugh their ass off with their release day PC games and modded consoles and think those of us that pay are total idiots. And with the way game companies treat us they kinda have a point.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.