Video Game Sales take 29% hit in July. The end of the console as a gaming platform?

http://blogs.digitalmediaonlineinc.com/TechUniverse/entry/20090817

Another report also mentioned that very few titles are set to be released for the Wii in the near future as Todd Howard would say.

I've not heard of any next generation console ready to take up the slack. Typically in these cycles when console gaming sales collapse buyers move on to home computers.

Actually, in recent cycles consoles haven't been hit. This is the 5th month in a row, and what is happening is more and more rentals and trades on sites like Goozex.

Sadly, with all of the new restrictions, PC gamers are actually missing out, since more and more games cannot be sold / rented / traded. Yay for us!

Highly doubtful, not in this economy anyways. Gaming consoles are still considerably cheaper than gaming PCs, and people are very conscious about money right now.

But games are significantly pricier, and most people also have a PC as well. Might not be a proper gaming PC, but still good enough to run stuff at PlayStation 2 quality -- and lots of folks have PC's capable of matching xBox 360 quality.

True, but you also have to keep in mind that it's the kiddies that demand the games in a large percentage of households, and most of those kiddies want the console games that are being catered to them.

Prime Junta said:

But games are significantly pricier, and most people also have a PC as well. Might not be a proper gaming PC, but still good enough to run stuff at PlayStation 2 quality -- and lots of folks have PC's capable of matching xBox 360 quality.

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Actually not so much anymore, as more and more of the ultra-cheap PC's have been pushed out, it has meant pushing big numbers in certain areas - memory, storage, 'dual core' ... at the expense of everything else. It actually seems like what is being sold has plateaued in the last year or two ...

JDR13 said:

True, but you also have to keep in mind that it's the kiddies that demand the games in a large percentage of households, and most of those kiddies want the console games that are being catered to them.

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Absolutely agree there.

Also, there is a reason the things like the Dragon Age CE enticement are starting to become more common - used sales and game trading sites are doing extremely well at the same time new sales are dropping. And, honestly, PC games have become *much* less tradeable in recent years while console games have been unchanged.

Darling, there's a Mr. Grim here about the reaping?

Sorry, had to be done.

Mike, any truth to these reports about few major titles coming out? The news items I see seem to parrot the new Madden picking things up but other than Arkham Asylum I'm not sure of anything huge coming.

I just assumed it was the economy hurting sales but rentals increasing in popularity make a lot more sense. If there are few new titles (and the economy probably dried up the credit for many companies) I can't see that doing anything but hurting.

Also, what about netbooks as gaming machines? Mine runs a lot of semi-new games.

There have been a oad of high profile games pushed from Q4'09 into Q1'10 ... some for technical reasons, others for competitive reasons, others for made-up reasons so we can't be sure. But there are still a bunch of games coming out, just perhaps not the insane amount we had last year ... or the year before that ...

As for netbooks, I think that the state of the art right now is not what I would call a gaming machine, since it has integrated graphics. I'm playing a bunch of ~2002-ish high-end shooters very nicely on it, as well as Sacred and NWN & expansions, but would wait for the upcoming Ion graphics chipset.

I meant to throw into the discussion the new $300 PS3 Slim. This is bound to make some sort of dent.

Not to forget how Windows 7 could affect the PC Gaming market when a number of people will start to finally upgrade from XP. I see that as an increase in the number of people upgrading from their older machine entirely and we may start seeing more Vista/W7 only titles. Consoles come and go but there's always PC's.

As for titles being pushed into 2010, that does sounds suspicious. Many people lauding the late release of DA for PC have forgotten how much bigger Q3 is to nearly every company.

I'm guessing a lot of titles you're referring to are on perma-hold until the economy improves.