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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."
I am unbelievable wealthy and I will continue to buy a lot of games! The economy? Pah! It matters not one whit to me! Now, fetch me my gold-plated Playstation 3! While I play the role of "Snake" in Metal Gear Solid 4, you plebes can stick to playing "Snake" on your outdated mobile phones! Hah, hah, hah! Worms!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
...stupid. I recently picked up HL2 Orange Box. It does NOT work on 3 machines, one 3 years old, two new this year. Steam just downloads and downloads forever over 22 mbps cable connection and the game never starts. I also just picked up Neverwinter Nights 2. It needs to patch for about 5 hours before it's playable. I tried the unpatched before patching. The game deadends easily and crashes frequently and runs really slow. I feel sorry for the folks who bought this back when it was new and had to wait for the patches. Even if the games worked as designed, the general design of games is so poor when it comes to playability that playing them has become boring. So, when money is tight, people quickly figure out what's necessary and what's not necessary and broken crappy games at $40, $50 or $60 are simply not necessary. Expect sales to continue to decline.
Oblivion was crap. They kept all of the worst things about Morrowind, and got rid of all the best. The graphics were pretty, but frankly they had to make Cyrodiil too small in order to achieve it.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.