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Once a hardened fortress the constant battering of recession could not penetrate, the walls of the videogame industry suddenly look to be on the verge of collapse, based on the latest market numbers issued by NPD.
The videogame industry is feeling the pain of recession. Image: krossbow/Flickr.
Marking the fifth consecutive month of decline for U.S. game sales, NPD Group’s figures for July show performance to be down by a whopping 29 percent when gauged against the same period in 2008 -- a year-on-year dollar drop of $848.9 million USD.
Despite gaming finally succumbing to the current economic cold snap, NPD remains confident that major upcoming software releases are likely to stop the rot and perhaps even turn the tide for the industry’s videogame publishers and hardware manufacturers.
Of the games looming large on the release calendar – and likely to receive increased exposure at next week’s gamescom trade fair in Germany – NPD points specifically to The Beatles: Rock Band, Halo: ODST, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, all of which are expected to promote substantial consumer activity before the close of 2009.
In terms of July’s big winners, first-party Nintendo title Wii Sports Resort led the software pack with more than 500,000 unit sales, while the Wii console remained the industry’s top seller thanks to the purchase of some 250,000 units -- although that figure is almost 50 percent lower than in July 2008.
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