Game Sales Continue Slide, Fall 25 Percent in March

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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The month of March, just like the preceding three months, saw more declines in the sale of video games. According to NDP Group, Inc, sales have declined for four straight months in the US, falling 25% in March alone compared to the previous year. Gaming consoles fared even worse, falling 35%.

Sales of video games dropped 25 percent to $553.1 million, according to NPD, as cited by game blogs and wire services
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It's not the economy
It's not the fact that <random high percentage> of all games are crap.

Nope.


Everyone together:

"It's piracy!"
 
These statistics are dumb:

1) does not include online sales (Steam / origin)

2) This March is 25% worse than last March? Hmm... let's look at game releases for each March:

Popular March 2011 releases:
Dragon Age 2
Crysis 2
Pokemon: Black and White
Rift
Homefront

Popular March 2012 video game releases:
ME3 (available through origin, so the stats in the article don't even count all of these.)
and...
A bunch of junk

I'd be really surprised if the top 3 from March 2011 didn't outsell all of March 2012.
ME3 is big, but DA2 + Crysis 2 + Homefront + Rift + +++++

3) Hardware sales are WAY DOWN too... I'm sure the March 2011 launch of the 3DS had nothing to do with that. Even though the 3DS didn't sell well at launch. I bet it sold better than all the hardware that didn't launch in 2012.

This is total garbage.
 
Yeah, statistics hardly mean anything when you can get them to say whatever you want.
 
Why are these studies given credence for the total market, these numbers do not include the digital download market.

Smells like lobbying by publishers, or just gross negligence by the NPD.
 
I have at least $500 in games between my 360 and my Steam account alone that I have yet to play.

BACKLOG. SRSLY.
 
Maybe they should lower the prices of their games.... Steam has been a great example of this. Game goes on sale by Indie Developer. Indie Developer sees 1000% or more increased revenue.

Games don't have to be expensive to profitable.
 
So do pre-orders for Diablo III not get counted in March? Or will they count for May when it releases?
 
Why do these studies never include digital sales? Is valve, EA, Amazon, gamersgate, etc. that secretive about their numbers? It would seem that viewing financial statements would allow any analyst or statistician to see digital game sales (otherwise these companies are not being very transparent to their investors). It paints a bad picture for the PC. I haven't bought a retail (hard) copy of a PC game in many years.

The problem is that when someone trying to decide between building/buying a PC and going console, these studies show a dying PC gaming industry. If I was a casual consumer it certainly would stray me. I am probably the exception, but my library of games is 50-100 PC games, and maybe 20 between both my PS3 and 360. The only console games I get are exclusives and sports games that my friends play or aren't available for PC.

The other thing that confuses me why hasn't developing for the PC been more popular. Not asking why it isn't more popular than console, that's obvious, just more popular in general. The development costs are a bit more than console due to working with many combinations of hardware and a bit more after sale maintanence (although consoles now suffer that as well), but there are no added costs of packaging or a resale market stealing from companies profits. On top of that marketing is often assisted by the digital distributors. Even when games are sold at large discount (typically at a point when they wouldn't be getting console sales due to used market) they are still making income. There is almost an unlimited life for the sale of a PC game. Too bad the next console cycle will eliminate this with no PC benefit ever.
 
guess people are tired of buying COD for the 11th time. I hope it keeps going down even further. Serves them right for waiting 8+ years between console generations.
 
wait wait.. console games fell more than PC? I thought PC piracy was killing sales.
 
Was anything of note even released in March?

You can't sell games that haven't been launched...
 
Yes... but PC piracy was supposed to be the reason they are justifying moving away from PC games.
 
they're not releasing enough call of doody games.

call of doody can single handedly save the whole video game industry.
They should be working hard to release a new COD every 3 months.
then video game slides will be nonexistent
 
No digital downloads? Then it's pointless numbers...

Like most statistics...
 
robble said:
wait wait.. console games fell more than PC? I thought PC piracy was killing sales.
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It was 25% for games and 35% for consoles. Not console games but the actual consoles ;).

But like others have said, stats like these are worthless as they don't include digital download sales. That's most likely where the 25% or more have gone to.
 
03grandam said:
It was 25% for games and 35% for consoles. Not console games but the actual consoles ;).

But like others have said, stats like these are worthless as they don't include digital download sales. That's most likely where the 25% or more have gone to.
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After over 5 years of the current gen consoles being out, the sales of the actual consoles have decreased? THAT MAKES NO SENSE! :p
 
Maybe the 59 dollar price point is a factor? 60 bucks for a crap game hurts. 49 stings.
 
haste. said:
Why do these studies never include digital sales? Is valve, EA, Amazon, gamersgate, etc. that secretive about their numbers? It would seem that viewing financial statements would allow any analyst or statistician to see digital game sales (otherwise these companies are not being very transparent to their investors). It paints a bad picture for the PC. I haven't bought a retail (hard) copy of a PC game in many years.
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Valve is, and can be. The others I don't know, you could probably find out if you pushed the issue since they are public companies. However Valve doesn't have to say what sales are and they don't. Since they are the heavy hitter, if you can't get them you aren't going to get an accurate digital sales number.

Remember that privately held companies don't have to release shit. They are accountable to their private investors. In the case of Valve, that may just be Newell as Harrington dissolved his share a long time ago.
 
fdiaz78 said:
Maybe the 59 dollar price point is a factor? 60 bucks for a crap game hurts. 49 stings.
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True you have a point now that there is a good amount of quality F2P (free 2 play) games on the PC like tribes ascend, black light retribution, tf2. Yea so forget MW and their silly yearly upgrades. I still cannot believe people still buy that crap and their elite subscription, dang activision trying milk money out of everyone.
 
The article doesn't mention piracy at all. In fact, it does nothing more than say sales were down. Why are you guys bitching?
 
ryken said:
The article doesn't mention piracy at all. In fact, it does nothing more than say sales were down. Why are you guys bitching?
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Force of habit. If every time someone raised a stick you were hit with it, you would start to flinch each time you heard of a stick being raised, yes?
 
yes once again they have no numbers for steam or most digital provider so really they cant claim that as already said.
 
TERA and Diablo 3 are both coming out next month... Let's just say that I've done my part.
 
robble said:
wait wait.. console games fell more than PC? I thought PC piracy was killing sales.
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No, you just didn't read the article. Video games in general fell 25%, with no mention of actual platforms, hardware fell 35%.

I think 1 month of sales just isn't significant enough to mention. If it were annual, for half a year or even quarterly then it would be much more meaningful. The sales within a single month will vary hugely with the actual releases in that month.
 
Yeah, Kickstarter has been getting my gaming money also. Maybe by the time those games come out, I well have dented my backlog...

Think we may be seeing a bit of market saturation here...
 
.....and they won't see any sales til May 2012. Welcome to gaming lull...
 
March is not normally part of the gaming lull. March is often a semi-big month because it is the end of the first quarter after the holidays. So a lot of titles that missed their holiday release come out in March to try and boost quarterly numbers.... But that didn't happen this year. Perhaps because a larger percentage of games than normal actually made their holiday release date.
 
MrGuvernment said:
yes once again they have no numbers for steam or most digital provider so really they cant claim that as already said.
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Yep.

I'm just waiting for another group (brick and mortar game retailers) to kick and scream blaming piracy for the failure of their business models as people - instead - move on to digital distribution.

I wish Valve published steam sales publicly so we could see just how much of an impact they have in the market. I'm willing to bet its huge.

Brick and mortar game retailers will eventually adapt, or take their place in the dust heap of history, but not until we see a significant amount of kicking, screaming and finger-pointing on their way down.
 
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