Rising Game Sales Reveal Trends?

Thanks to Smartmoney.com for their report into GameStop's second-quarter financial results, which revealed "a 31% surge in videogame software sales", although a drop from last year's hardware-discounted highs, and "better-than-expected performance in stores." According to the report, "...the company said videogame-software sales were 'very strong' for the quarter, with leading titles such as 'Enter The Matrix' from Atari Inc., 'NBA Street: Volume 2' and 'NCAA Football 2004' from Electronic Arts Inc. and 'Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic' from LucasArts." Most interestingly, GameStop indicated they're expecting "...further hardware price reductions 'or similar promotional activities' during the third quarter", a move that may include the rumored $99 GameCube price drop which IGN Cube are confidently predicting for the end of September.

$99?

[Yorrike]

$99 for a Gamecube may go so far as to reduced perceived value in consumers to a level where they think the hardware is sub-quality (and before anyone says otherwise, Nintendo hardware is some of the highest quality in terms of duribility, anywhere).

Mind you, it may help in shifting a few thousand more units, because at that price, with the games the GameCube has, there's little excuse for anyone not to buy one.

Plus, with 10 GameCubes for less than a grand... my dream of a house made entirely of Nintendo consoles is just a tad closer to reality.

Re:$99?

[mausmalone]

If anything, the PS2 will reduce its price (since Sony has room to wiggle). Perhaps the system won't drop in price, but a reduction for the broadband bundle?

I'll just be glad if the Gamecube controllers reduce in price. Lending my games out to other people has done a real number on mine.

Re:$99?

[n0wak]

$99 for a Gamecube may go so far as to reduced perceived value in consumers to a level where they think the hardware is sub-quality

By this logic, consumers must feel that a Neo Geo home console is approximately 4 or 5 times more powerful than the GameCube.

(Assuming the average consumer has even heard of the Neo Geo -- they might think it's some sort of modern geology.)

Good to see

[toddhunter]

That 'Enter the Matrix' is a top selling title. I have heard only bad things about it since day one. Has anyone played it and thinks it is worth it's success?

Re:Good to see

[mausmalone]

the thing they don't tell you is that it's also the #1 game sold back to the stores. People get it, and are dissatisfied with it pretty early on, from what I've heard. It's definitely on the "rent first" list, since you'll easily find used copies later, so you can rent and buy used, and still save money over a new copy.

Re:Good to see

[Maserati]

Yup. I'm one of the happy crowd who preordered it. I could see a pattern in magazine previews of areas of the game that were either talked around or panned (sadly, rare).

I can just about manage to excuse everone who gave it a good preview though. It has a lot of promise. If they'd "shipped it when it [was] done" it could have been the game of the year. I mean, the developers *tried* to give us the Matrix experience in a console game.

If they put another six months into it and released a "gold edition" when

Re:Good to see

[delus10n0]

There is a "Special Edition" of Enter The Matrix coming out before Revolutions; it's basically the latest version of the game with a DVD of extra material. Pretty much crap.

They still haven't fixed the 20+ bugs I've found with the game, and I was banned from their forums (ataricommunity.com) for listing them. Yay!

Re:Good to see

[jayoyayo]

for real. something interesting that i noticed was that a large northern california chain (Fry's Electronics) advertised 'Enter the Matrix' not as a game but as "exclusive Matrix footage".

Re:Good to see

[The Munger]

Daikatana [ign.com] didn't do too badly on pre-orders either...

hmmm..

[jayoyayo]

50 million people in the USA have broadband and games are available from kazaa. this further proves that the RIAA/MPAA claim that piracy is killing their profits is complete BS. make something that people want/enjoy and they will gladly pay for it.

Strange....

[alphaseven]

Last month, slashdot ran a story saying that U.S. Games Sales Slip Marginally [slashdot.org], attributed by some to a weak economy and that it's between console cycles and that the Matrix and Tomb Raider games sucked.

So which is it? Is the game industry doing well or is it just that GameStop is doing well?

Re:Strange....

[simoniker]

I think it depends how you spin it - sales are up from the previous quarter, but slightly down from the same quarter the previous year. That can be read as either bad, or good, depending on whether you're Reuters looking for a good angle or GameStop looking to hype financial results.

Gamestop

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, good. This IS the same Gamestop that informed the regional, district, and store managers that they would be required to cut hours as lean as possible for the end of the second quarter, right? Our store was given a number of 'grid hours' calculated against sales, and we were informed that we had to come in 15 hours UNDER grid to satisfy the shareholders.

Thankfully, we now see that sales were on an upsurge. Good thing none of that income will make it down to the employees making minimum wage. Their once-yearly evaluations in March were designed specifically to prevent any employee from getting more than fifteen cents more per hour, and some managers were told not to allow anyone performing merely 'adequately' to get ANY raise at ALL.

To hell with Gamestop. When EB moves into town I'll be the first one jumping ship. The writing was on the wall when Gamestop bought the failure that was Funcoland and then adopted their horrid policies.

Re:Gamestop

[MajikMan]

I, too, work in a GS store, and yes, they've been cutting hours like crazy for the last few weeks. Even after our store had missed their payroll hours by what they were supposed to, I got sent home early. I'd guess it's considerably easier to make a profit when your expenses are cut in half... I wouldn't be surprised if the company adopted the new set of hours as standard.

I didn't even get my yearly evaluation this year though, so don't feel to bad.

From Personal Experience

[chadlnx]

From personal experience, running a comparison shopping service [gamefarmer.com] for both new and preowned console games from NES to Xbox, game sales have been rising sharply.

I have specificly noticed a sharp increase in GameCube and GameBoy Advance click-throughs and purchases in the last two months. I can only speculate that any pending price drop by Nintendo will increase clicks and sales.

Also, many gamers on my site have set price alerts (15 dollars and below) and a large number of Xbox, PS2, and GameCube games.

Re:From Personal Experience

[johndoejersey]

this sounds like a great plan.

Gone are my days when i can afford the time and money to buy titles the day of release, however picking up a decent title 6 months down the line at 1/2 or maybe 1/4 price sure does sound tempting.

It's only one company - GameSpot

[WoTG]

Really, how indicitive is this of the market at large? Sure sales are up at GAME SPOT (being Canadian, perhaps I don't realize how large they are...). Couldn't it also be that Game Spot is growing? If they opened 30% more stores, the numbers wouldn't seem so promising...