14 DAY TRIAL // January 2009 was the first month when, after the euphoria of the Christmas sales season of 2008, the videogames industry began to shed its “recession-proof” mantle and show signs that sales would be on a downward trend for quite some time. And January 2010 is no better, with the overall revenue brought in by the industry in the first weeks of the year going down by no less than 13%.
The biggest culprit for the decline has been the hardware sector, which saw the value of its sales decline to 353.7 million dollars, about 21% lower than last year. Some of the decrease can be attributed to the price cuts, which Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo enacted for their home consoles in the second half of 2009, but for some devices, the overall number of consoles sold also went down quite substantially.
The Nintendo Wii is again the best selling gaming console on the United States market, with 465,800 consoles moved to gamers, a significant 31% less than in the same period of 2009. Second place went to the Nintendo DS handheld, which managed 422,200 units in sales, also down over last year.
The Xbox 360 from Microsoft occupied third place, its 332,800 units representing an increase of more than 7% over 2008, while the PlayStation 3 was in fourth place, with 276,900 consoles sold, a very big one third increase year over year. The biggest current generation sales decrease award goes to the PlayStation Portable from Sony, which dropped 42% to reach 100,100 units, while the PlayStation 2 is showing its age, only managing to move 41,600 units.
With January looking so bleak, it’s highly unlikely to see a rebound of the market in February, which has a lower sales period. March, that brings the release of the highly awaited PlayStation 3 exclusive God of War III, might see the market move on an upward trend.