The Economist reports today that the videogame industry had a very mild recession in 2009, with strong indications that growth is now firmly back on track. The article appears here (subscription required) and draws heavily from statistics by Piers Harding-Rolls of the Game Intelligence division of Screen Digest. Relevant points are below.
There were indeed some very bad months in 2009. There was a year-over-year drop of 31% in June, as well as a 29% drop in July. A record-breaking December, however, particularly with the PS3 price cut brought the year-end totals close to normal.
-> US decline in videogame sales for 2009 were 9.3%, the worst of the lot.
-> Europe declined 3.5%
-> Japan declined 2%
On consoles, sales of Xbox and Wii were flat for the year, but PS3 jumped 22%.
The analyst has two potential conclusions to the unexpected recession, however mild. One is that the growth of the games industry means there are many more casual gamers, people more likely to reduce their purchases in a downturn. Many of these turned to second-hand games, web games or mobile titles.
Another possibility, sited by Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo, is that there were fewer compelling titles released in 2009, at least compared to 2008. “We were not able to produce fun-enough products,” he says. The top 20 games took a larger share of sales in 2009 than in 2008.
According to the Economist, the jury is still out on whether or not the games industry is fully recession-resistant.
The full article appears in the March 25, 2010 edition of the Economist.