Why video game sales in America down?
Video games aren't doing all that well in America today. Market research firms that track these kinds of things find that sales of game consoles have been falling by a couple of percentage points each month for some time now. As far as game titles are concerned, the fall has been far more precipitous - 15% month on month. When there's a new piece of coveted hardware like the Nintendo 3DS or the Kinect, sales do head up a bit; but that happens to just a blip on the radar. Overall, the trend in video game sales is clear - it's going downhill. Now what could be causing this? That's the question everyone wants an answer to.
These days, any time anything goes wrong in consumer technology, the reflex usually is to wonder if the iPhone has anything to do with it. The iPhone has already destroyed the market for GPS units, MP3 players, wristwatches, entry-level point-and-shoot cameras, the Flip camera and in some cases, even laptops. Could the iPhone and its Angry Birds really have anything on the kind of superior experience that there is to be had on a game console? NPD, a research firms that follows video game sales is thinking that that may not be so far-fetched.
The way they see it, the iPad and the iPhone together, have begun to draw gaming fans in on the strength of their graphics processors and their great gaming apps. But could it possibly be that cut and dried? Why would anyone choose to move their gaming interest to a tiny phone? Could people really be giving up Portal 2 for Angry Birds? The answer to that question would depend entirely on what people are willing to spend. For a large number of gamers, video games aren't really high on the priority list. If they have $100 to spend on video games overall, and if that buys them 20 new iPhone games as opposed to 2 games on a PS3 or Xbox 360, wouldn't they rather choose all the new games on their phone? It wouldn't quite work this way with hard-core gamers. But then no industry can survive on merely catering to a niche group. The videogame industry also appears to be suffering from a lack of new ideas - new ideas that can be worth $50. Smartphone game designers on the other hand can easily come up with attractive new ideas for a few minutes’ gameplay. And they certainly are good enough to be worth the $2 or the $3 asking price.
Unless the economy improves in a hurry and people begin to find more discretionary money to throw at fun stuff like games and movies, videogames are going to have a hard time recovering.