Video Game Sales Fall for 6th Consecutive Month

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[citation][nom]tacoslave[/nom]drop the prices to 30 bucks for new games and youll see sales figures like never before.[/citation]

Right idea but 30 bucks is still too much. They should do a trial price of 10 bucks on the next big release game to see how many copies they can sell at that price, my guess is they will sell more than 6x at 10 bucks than they will at 60 bucks.
 
XBOX sales are probably ok because they fail so frequently most people have to replace them often. Other consoles don't fail so frequently so they don't sell consoles over and over to the same person.
 
The great recession is not over yet, I don't care what the news says. They are only saying that because there is an election coming up. People are hurting and the ones that have gotten back on their feet are still shellshocked and not in a very spendy mood. I was due for a new computer last spring but put it off and still have not bought a computer. And I'm not going to until next tax return. And I never lost my job or got wages cut. But I'm still nervous.
 
How about the games are all the same....Kill Kill Kill.
What ever happened to imagination?
 
Well what do they expect if you have to play 5 year old games bugs and all just to have somethign worth playing more than the initial MW2 4 hours disaster ?

The only partial possible look at a demo pc game might be DukeNukem 2011 and nothing else, not even bothering looking at release dates.

Just like AVP2010 / C&C4 beta / MOH openclient what everyone complained about during testing is the same issues that still persist years after it was released and the F-you attetude of the Game developers is so obvious that the whole Software gaming market is about to crash.

Kids in their garage can and has always made better quality products for free or ended up selling it that was worth playing.

Retarded Gaming manufacturers only give a damn about the accountant and CEO's pockets no wonder the gaming world is so deep in the s*it.

Where is 2010 equivalent of UT2k4 / FEAR1 / Graw1 / HL2 or similar quality / inovation / experience.

Singularity with it constant delays might already been released who knows, it seemed to be a decent game no idea.

Why is there no decent open source type side to a new game released or the basics like map editors / dedicated server software / run from home over internet / lan that everyone knows, needs and demands = sale immidiately in my book.

PS> Ubisoft had a software tester no skill idiots jobs post last week and I would not even bother to apply seeing the junk they make and the embaresement they are would not want to be linked to that bunch of moron's.

Q? would you rather stay in the 5* , lots of freedom default "Guantanamo bay" (as compared to Arizona) or work / be linked to Ubisoft / any gaming company ?
 
I am one of those gamers that is not really exited to play games, they are not longer enjoyable. I regret buying a ps3/xbox 360, the prices are high 60$ plus tax thats like 65$ per game, no thank you very much. Not only are prices high but the games feel empty and they are very very short, games with only 6-12 hours of game play, does anyone else remembers games where you could go for the 99hrs of game play?
Now is all about FPS and we all know the only thing we care is killing other people online. Now companies use the pre order and you will get, "This item/costume" feels to me like a desperate attempt to get more customers.
I feel so sad for the new generation of gamers, they will never get to experiment the great moments that many of us did.
 
[citation][nom]znegval[/nom]I wanted to buy a specific one (Starcraft II) but $60? Sorry I'll do without.[/citation]
Agree plus no LAN support and it is in three parts.
 
[citation][nom]dimar[/nom]I want to buy PC games, but I can't find anything interesting lately...[/citation]
Try these at a discount if you have not played them.
NeverWinter Nights 2 Diamond edition (all expansion packs included)
Oblivion Game of the Year edition, down side is you will have to hack the ini file to customize your mouse, not too hard.
Then old school, Amazon has the Baldur's Gate series and Icewind Dale series (classics) for great prices. They work on my Win 7 64bit system.
 
[citation][nom]Inquisitor Zax[/nom]Duh! In a time when a LOT of people are out of work, or worried about keeping their job, blowing income on video games is just outright stupid. People save up money, wait for a game they will really really like and buy that. None of us know what is coming in the next year of few, esp in the USA with all the new taxes coming down.[/citation]
Yeah in the U.S. people really worried about the economy so there not going to buy games at all or or rent it from game fly. Our government said that the recession was over in July. Yeah right, and were still losing jobs.
 
[citation][nom]ninjamonkeh[/nom]How can system sales be fine , yet software sales be down? Pretty simple really , Gamefly. I use to buy 2-3 games a month, I havent bought a single console game since I joined gamefly. Why should I throw out $60+ for a 12hour game, i put it in my que, beat it in 3 days, send it back for a new one.[/citation]

only problem is it takes them a week to send you a new game.. seriously???? i mean even if you get to 2 game plan... trust me i agree with you but i think it would be much faster just going to the local video store.. and overall you will end up spending the same amount because of turn around time..
 
One reason is because people aren't impressed with the games. Sorry MS, Sony, and Nintendo you guys are douche bags, it's time to release a new console with graphics for 2010
 
What they should do:
First month they sell at $50 (not $60)
After first month they drop to $20-$30

They get the initial profits then everybody else can buy it a bit later and they will probably make a huge number more sales.
 
Deliver quality games without extreme drm schemes and sales should be good - Just look at blizzard titles they deliver quality and at the same time don't enforce extreme drm schemes. Unprotected titles suffer too as strike a balance in the DRM used!

The biggest longtime concern is the lack of really innovative games, many of the huge publishers only explore their old tried gametypes and if they want to be "innovative" they make really poor judgement calls like C&C4 (wich imo destroyed all the C&C playstyle). What happened to games like Hostile Waters, Homeworld and the like ? Where there were real invention! Its no wonder the game sales are hurting when the vast majority of games are like many of the tv-shows... same garbage over and over making people look elsewhere for their entertainment needs!
 
I'm going to invest into one of my favorable game developers and have them build a game that can really sell.. I'm talking AAA+ title with uniqueness, visuals, story, and gameplay... hell yea
 
Steam gets most of my money, but I troll the sub $20 catagories and only buy one or two $50 titles a year.

For non-Valve titles, most people are starting to learn if you just wait a year you get a game, (a fully functional patched game), the one or two expansions all for $40 or less.

You all are funny, maybe speaking for console games the quality might be going down, personally I think it's just stopped leeping forward and is bake in slow growth mode and you all have just become jaded like the rest of us old timers.

I can specifically remember certain events while playing FPS that were just amazing at 640x480 with one or two bots on the screen and enough content to barely fill up a CDR. Now I can be playing a game at 1900x1200, with enough vegetation that the jungle looks like a jungle, 10-15 bots stalking me, enough lighting affects for a movie, destructable evironment being shreded all around me, and enough content that would choke dozens of CDRs

and my response is "eh...that was kinda cool"

The game quality is as high as its ever been and is climbing even higher every year, you are just no longer easy to amuse.

Sorry it happens to us all. I hit the wall 5-6 years ago and only fire up the gaming rig once every week or two and only then for the best of the AAA and indi titles, which by then are a year or two old.

 

That's all well and good, but what about a decent story, or innovative gameplay? I don't think the Crysis nanosuit really counts as innovative. Game developers simply don't have the capacity to be any more creative, at least not with corporate pigs at the Activision/EA head office forcing deadlines down their throats. Innovation only comes from indie devs now, but their games are often lost in the sea of AAA recyclables.

I'm starting to wonder if we need a AAAA classification because AAA is now the baseline for boring. It makes me wonder what a mere AA game would be like :lol:
 
[citation][nom]the associate[/nom]What's interesting about console sales is they don't realize that most people who are going to buy one already have...i'm still surprised they sell as good as they do 0.0[/citation]

Most of the sales are probably from people replacing failed units that are out of warranty.
 
New games are mostly junk. Sure graphics have improved but everything else has gone down hill. Very little gameplay and what little game play there is, it is repetitive.

the prices are also crazy. A movie cost more to make than a videogame, A movie also takes about the same time or longer, and yet a movie is a fraction of the price of a game, and guess which industry has better sales and more profits.

If you get rid of the repetitive crap from games, you may only end up with about 30 minutes or so of content. Another problem is the industry expects to have increasing sales each year regardless of the content they produce. Games and movies and music are basically art, if you don't make good art, people wont buy it

If the major movie studios decided to start start recording and selling videos of poorly made school plays, will their sales drop?

The movie and game industry is a dynamic market. Sales will sway widely based on the content produced.
 
The price of bringing a game to market is through the roof. So no one wants to add a risky new feature for fear of losing tens of millions if it doesn't fly with its fan base.

The exception to this is Madden, which year after year removes great features (superstar icons, passing funnel, practice modes...) and gets away with it because it knows people will buy its updated rosters year after year.
 
[citation][nom]whey[/nom]I am one of those gamers that is not really exited to play games, they are not longer enjoyable. I regret buying a ps3/xbox 360, the prices are high 60$ plus tax thats like 65$ per game, no thank you very much. Not only are prices high but the games feel empty and they are very very short, games with only 6-12 hours of game play, does anyone else remembers games where you could go for the 99hrs of game play? Now is all about FPS and we all know the only thing we care is killing other people online. Now companies use the pre order and you will get, "This item/costume" feels to me like a desperate attempt to get more customers. I feel so sad for the new generation of gamers, they will never get to experiment the great moments that many of us did.[/citation]
What I was thinking to a T.

I guess as I have gotten older as well, games don't interest me as much(playing them) but still love reading and keeping on-top of the community, but still a part of my life. I am also not a HUGE single-player fan, but have my games. Mainly a multiplayer nut; have only bought a few games in the last 10 years for the single-player.

The last single-player game I completed was Modern Warfare a couple years ago on PS3 and was so disappointed. Before that, I think I actually have to say Quake 4, then Half-Life before that (got in to HL a couple years after release), then Max Payne (which REALLY got me in to PC gaming) and that is pretty much it. Besides my childhood, with Doom, etc and various NES and SNES games I completed. But, for me, the length of Half-Life is how long an FPS SHOULD be. Want to say average play-through time was about 30 hours. Half-Life 2 was half the length.

Games are just not like they used to be. Seriously, what happened to 20+ and even 30+ hour games? RTS and RPG games excluded. For me it's still a REALLY close toss-up for me between Half-Life and Max Payne for story. No game has the FEEL that the Max Payne story did.

Okay, to wrap up; to this day, I would still rather play some stupid Flash games that have more innovation than most games coming out today, than play my PS3. No more gaming rig 🙁 But can play QuakeLive :) I can sit on some flash games for hours and won't want to get up. I also feel soooo sorry for today's gamers who only care about how good the game looks and could give a crap about the gameplay.

 
Too bad most are missing the point.. If you want to play PC games go ahead, but for mos people, they are fine with playing with a console. As someone else pointed out, the games are too expensive at this point. Just like others, I either will rent a game or wait until there is a used copy at GameStop or some other used game store.

Not to sound cheap, but the sweet spot for most games should be around $10.00 to $30.00....

 
It's very depressing reading all these comments from gamers who have no idea where to find good games....quite depressing actually. These past few years have had some quite good games that have LONG single player campaigns. GTA IV, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Little Big Planet, Dragon Age, Borderlands, Plants versus Zombies, Mass Effect 2. I point out super mario galaxy 2....its such a perfect game and such a masterpiece. Just looking at this one game proves gaming is not dead. In addition there have been some amazing multiplayer games: Team Fortress 2, L4D, BC2, SC2, MW2: all of which can suck up your time indefinitely. If you really want to enjoy gaming, get a nice PC (since xbox/ps3/pc have similar lineups) and a Wii (nintendo's holiday line up is a trip into the past; DK/Kirby/Goldeneye/Epic Mickey). You guys need to stop being cynical and grow YOUNG!
 
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