Posts Tagged ‘Wii’

Video Game Industry Takes Hit From Nowhere?

Apparently, the Video Game industry doesn’t realize we’re in a recession. Not sure I believe that NO ONE saw this coming. As the article below will point out, video game sales dropped 20% year of year during the month of May, but lets look at some of the reasons why.

1) Where were the big titles? The normally release heavy month of May saw the release of only one highly anticipated blockbuster caliber game, L.A. Noire. I am personally still working my way through it as I have been inordinately busy lately. That said, being only 30% through the game, I am NOT impressed. It’s interesting to see how the previously unheard of extreme amount of live action MoCap translated back into game play. There is certainly a novelty factor to seeing a character in a video game and immediately recognize them as a relatively prominent character actor. Otherwise, it’s just another Rockstar sandbox game. There’s plenty of interesting places to explore and landmarks of old L.A. to see, but the cut scenes are jumpy, the dialogue is hardly better than the film I made as my Senior thesis in film school, and the backstory is just randomly thrown into the story for no reason and has no relation to the cases you’re working. I’m wholly unimpressed. Still playing Red Dead Redemption though.

2) Last I checked, we’re still in a recession. The price of video games has always technically stayed pretty well the same. Not to say they’ve always been $60, but when adjusted for inflation you see what I mean. Take for example the late 1985 release of the NES, by May of that year they were still on their way to critical mass, but really starting to catch on. The May 1987 Consumer Price Index is 113.1, whereas the May 2011 Consumer Price Index is 225.96. This indicates that the average market in the US experienced approximately 112.86% inflation from May 1987 to May 2011. While that seems like a lot to explain one small point, here’s that point. The average NES games in 1987 cost $49.95. Adjust that for inflation and you get about $57, eerily close to the average $60 you see on games now. The reason this blows is that the cost of media production, through technological advances, has declined similarly over the same period, effectively increasing profit margins on the game. So there’s no reason that games need to cost $60 now. They’re usually just covering their losses on the consoles themselves by marking up the games. Anyways people, what I’m getting to is that these games are a HIGH PRICED LUXURY! When the proverbial shit hits the fan, economically, luxuries are the first thing to go. Simply put, the economy was going to catch up to the game market at some point. Also, the above explanation also account for why I believe you’ll never see a new gaming console released in the future…

3) Waiting for the new announcements maybe? This is a bit of an extension of point number 2 above. With E3 taking place during the first week of June, perhaps it’s such that in a limited economy, with limited cash, people were simply waiting to see what the new big games coming out in late summer and fall were. I would expect to see less of a decline in sales for the month of June, year over year, accounting partially to summer vacation. Winter was very bad in many places this year requiring most schools to add days and run into June. So all of the kids who are out of school this week may run out and buy a game. But further, no we know what’s coming. If we didn’t see something we liked, we go ahead and buy the title we’ve been wavering on for a few months.

What I’m saying video game industry is this. Man Up! Everyone’s going through some tough times, so will you. Well maybe not Lebron James, because he doesn’t have to live in reality like all of us poor people. Go Mavs! Oh, and yes, I had a Power Glove.

After riding high from the thrill of E3 last week, the video game industry got a harsh slap in the face Monday.

As reported by the NPD Group, sales of video games in the month of May were down 19 percent compared to a year ago — the worst performance for the industry in nearly five years.

You have to look back as far as October 2006 to find a dive this steep. And, making matters worse, none of the industry’s fortunetellers saw it coming. Analysts had expected May to be relatively flat thanks to a Wii price cut early in the month.

Game software sales came in at $375.8 million, $90 million less than May 2010. Year to date, the industry is a worrying 14 percent off of 2010′s retail sales pace.

“This month’s story really is about a light new release schedule as compared to last year,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

There’s some truth in that. Last year saw eventual Game of the Year winner Red Dead Redemption hit stores, along with Microsoft’s Alan Wake and several other big budget releases. This May offered us a different Rockstar Games release in L.A. Noire, the month’s top selling game, and Brink, a shooter that didn’t score well with critics but managed to capture the #2 spot.

On the hardware front, it wasn’t a happy story for Nintendo, which saw sales drops across all of its systems, a fact that particularly underscores the weakness of the Wii these days, given the price cut. The 3DS, the company’s best hope for righting the ship this year, saw continued weakness, but that might reverse itself within the next week with the release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D.

Sony saw some minor sales increases with the PS3 hardware, though, and Microsoft actually has something to celebrate as the Xbox 360 has consistently had month-over-month sales increases for nearly a year and a half now.

“Overall, the Xbox 360 platform has contributed 34 percent of year-to-date revenues (across hardware, content and accessories) generated by new physical retail sales, gaining 7 share points over last year,” said Frazier.

Here are the month’s top 10 games.
1. L.A. Noire | Take 2 Interactive
2. Brink | Bethesda Softworks
3. Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game | Disney Interactive Studios
4. Portal 2 | Electronic Arts
5. Mortal Kombat 2011 | Warner Bros. Interactive
6. Call of Duty: Black Ops | Activision Blizzard
7. Zumba Fitness: Join the Party | Majesco
8. NBA 2K11 | Take 2 Interactive
9. Just Dance 2 | Ubisoft
10. Lego Star Ware III: The Clone Wars | Lucasarts

Courtesy of Chris Morris at Yahoo’s PluggedIn

http://blog.games.yahoo.com/blog/766-may-video-game-sales-worst-in-five-years

From GanskeLaw.com