Game Sales Down Last Year — Did We Really Need A Report on This?

The latest reports are in and no surprise game sales in 2009 were off by around 2 billion. Rather than regurgitate the stats of said report lets think about think about this. The sales for last year come in at around $19 billion.  Two billion down may seem like a big deal but guess what? Nineteen billion is still a lot of money. It’s always amazing to think that so many of these reports will look at this as a bad thing when in fact when you have an industry like ours that consistently performs well, even in a down economy. They use words like “plummeting” and “disappointing sales.”

Disappointing? How many people would complain if their business made that much in a recession?  Sure the software and hardware isn’t selling as much but it doesn’t take a 20 page report to figure out why. Last year we had a truckload of peripheral games which by themselves cost  at least half the price of a console. And as we’ve talked about before, the console makers are trying to make their machines go beyond that 5 year benchmark before breaking out some new gear. Also no surprise is that Nintendo continues to do well and make money in sales on the DS and the Wii — they’re the “everybody” consoles with games that anyone can play. The marvel and wonder from this report was that Activision jumped in at the end on the year and cleared more than 8 million units of Modern Warfare 2. One game can make a difference.

So with full year of blockbuster releases on the calendar and technology that we are all anxious to see revealed there’s a strong possibility that the industry as a while will do well this year.