Another month and another decline for the gaming industry. There could be many factors why the gaming industry is seeing sluggish sales. For the 3 majors gaming consoles Xbox 360, PS3 and the Wii there has’nt been a new revamped next generation console in almost 10 years. Are gamers looking to move on to next generation consoles. Could it be gamers are now downloading their games and leaving the physical copies in the stores or just downloading the games illegally. Whatever it is the gaming industry is hurting.
“These sales figures represent new physical retail sales of hardware, software and accessories, which account for roughly 50 percent of the total consumer spend on games,” said NPD analyst Liam Callahan. “When you consider our preliminary estimate for other physical format sales in September such as used and rentals at $191 million, and our estimate for digital format sales including full game and add-on content downloads including microtransactions, subscriptions, mobile apps, and the consumer spend on social network games at $488 million, we would estimate the total consumer spend in September to be just under $1.6 billion.”
Callahan did say that hardware sales picked up last month following an even slower August, “which points to momentum heading into the holiday season.” NPD also pointed to Nintendo’s announcement of the next-generation Wii U console’s availability for the holidays as having “the potential to reinvigorate retail sales of hardware in coming months.”
[pcmag]
