Analysts Foresee Another Banner Year For Videogame Industry

Analysts observing the videogame industry forsee 2008 being another blockbuster year in sales. Sales during the month of February were considerably up, according to the NPD group. Early in the year is historically a very slow time in the game sales calendar, making the 34% jump for the month highly significant. Grand Theft Auto IV is likely to be an engine for sales throughout the year: "The game, which will be available on the Xbox 360 and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3, is expected to boost sales of both consoles. Pre-orders have been better than expected, according to its publisher, Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan, expects the game to sell about 9 million units during the company's fiscal year, which ends in October. Roughly 6 million of this, he added, will be to Xbox 360 owners."

Re:Economic Conditions

[7Prime]

interesting point. Watch as movie theater revenues plummit and game sales sky rocket. Average movie length: 2 hours. Average game length: 30-50 hours. Which is the more ecconomical entertainment medium? Games, by a long shot. Less trips to Blockbuster or the Cinemaplex means less money wasted on gas.

Re:Economic Conditions

[Anonymous Coward]

I always find the cost-per-unit-time argument somewhat curious. You can pick up a copy of Ulysses from a used book store for something around $2. It will keep you occupied for 40-50 hours. Yet more people will probably play GTA4 or see Indiana Jones this year than the total number of Americans who have ever read Ulysses in their lives. U. p. up. What kind of perfume does your wife use.

Re:Economic Conditions

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to spend like £80 on a night out about 3 times a week here in the UK a few years back. Then I went back to playing Ultima Online followed by Dark Age of Camelot and suddenly my entertainment costs dropped to like £9.95 a month or whatever it was for subs, life certainly got a whole lot cheaper that's for sure ;)

£900+ a month down to £9.95 was quite the jump and I didn't even have to lose friends because I got them hooked too! ;)

Expenditure has gone back up for me nowadays as I'm playing Wii/360 games and buy about 5 a month at around £30 a peice so around £150 a month but that's still a whole lot less than in my clubbing and pubbing days. For me it wasn't the cost of fuel but the cost of beer, taxis, club entrance fees and a meat feast pizza or kebab to soak it all up before bed!

Some might call it sad that I gave up going out all the time to play games, but I found it a lot nicer not suffering hangovers, having vast amounts of savings available and still finding time amongst gaming to do productive stuff.

Good sales? Not likely with a depression around.

[boomka]

It is very likely that economy is sliding into depression. No record sales in such environment, sorry. Wall Street has been convulsing in a crisis for 6 month now, and things are getting worse by the day. We just had one of the largest investment banks collapse on Friday [blogspot.com]. Events of such significance have not happened since the Great Depression, and don't for a second assume this will not pull the broader economy down.

Re:Economic Conditions

[mobby_6kl]

> Watch as movie theater revenues plummit and game sales sky rocket.

You mean, like this [slashdot.org]?

Re:Good sales? Not likely with a depression around

[Dunbal]

Entertainment always does well in a recession/depression. Perhaps a little historical revision is due. People stop putting gas in their cars, stop paying their mortgages/rents/credit cards, stop buying clothes, but yet they still manage to find a few dollars for "escapism". It used to be Hollywood films - the box offices did quite well in the "Great Depression", but now I think you could add computer games to that category.

And yes, I'm a day trader, I follow the news, I know about the 25 basis point cut and JP Morgan buying Bear Sterns for 1/10th of what it's worth, and the 20 B "guarantee" by the fed , etc. The economy is in the shitter, and I keep making money every day. Mostly shorting stock, but sometimes I buy at the bottom too.

I sure wish I had had some TTWO before EA threatened a takeover though. $7 a share is very nice indeed. Oh well. I'll keep making my money 5 cents at a time.

Re:Slashdot mindset

[JackAxe]

So...

Games on the Wii and DS cost significantly less to develop. They have a larger user base than the PS3 and 360, so publishers make back their investment faster. And it's a sad truth, but shovelware, which is quite abundant on the WIi right now -- because of its huge popularity -- generally earns more money for the publisher than higher budget games. The Wii is basically on track to replace the PS2 -- the current shovelware king -- in this area.

I have a R4DS, but I still buy DS games -- I use it for SCummVM/Hombrew. Here in the states -- the biggest game market -- flash carts owners are a minority. Most households won't know where buy one, know how to use one, let alone be able to find "pirated" games for it.

The Wii and DS are decimating the 360 and PS3. Developers are jumping ship to the Wii,since overall sells for the PS3 and 360 aren't good enough. MS's 360 isn't even doing as well as its original Xbox, which had sold more units in the same period of time.

<]=)

Re:Slashdot mindset

[denton420]

What you have said is true. I feel that it is important to note that this signals an important shift in the gaming industry that is happening faster than ever. These numbers support the fact that gaming is heading more towards the mainstream market (As it has been doing since its inception, has it not?) where price is king and most video game purchases are made at wal-mart by people who dont know what a polygon is or what quality textures add to a game. It is nice to see the masses making video games a little bit less nerdy one step at a time!

Re:Not shocking..

[Belial6]

Wow. That is some serious revisionist history. The first and biggest problem with the recounts of "The video game crash" is the redefining of a video game. A game console IS a computer. The C64 was a gaming platform. The revisionists stories always refer to the C64 as being a pull away from video games. It wasn't. It was simply the gaming platform that helped bury the Atari 2600. Saying that price drops on a next gen gaming system that lead to huge sales was what turned a recession into a full-out crash is kind of silly.

As for knock off games on the 2600 compared to today... I don't know if you saw some of the crap that has been released on the NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1, PS2, XBOX, and GameCube, but crap did not end with the 2600. (I don't own any of the current gen system so I can only speculate that they have games that are crap just like the previous generation.)

"Because of these issues, modern console makers hold absolute control over their consoles. No one creates a game for their console without express approval from the console manufacturer. In addition, the console makers produce high-quality first-party titles and seek out desirable third-party exclusives in an effort to keep consumer confidence high. This careful control of the market ensures that the market conditions of the 1980's are not repeated"

This is simply not true. In fact, prior to Atari 2600, it wasn't even considered that third party games would even exists. It was when developers from Activision left Atari to form the worlds first third party game publisher, that Atari sued, thinking that they could retain control of the platform. It was because sueing did not work in keeping a monopoly that the following systems have included technical lock-out systems. Looking at the crap that was available for virtually every system, shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that "quality" was not the reason for the monopoly practices of the system manufacturers. It also does not make sure that the market conditions of the 80 do not exist. The Pacman and ET problems certainly did not kill video games. At best they help put the 2600 out of its misery. Remember, Pitfall came out the same year as Pacman and ET on the 2600. It was the best selling game the 2600 ever had. Again. It wasn't gaming that went away. It was just a shift to the next gen system, the C64.

I'm not counting on people going back to the PC for gaming. I'm just saying that if the console systems went under, people would likely keep gaming by moving to the PC.

I also don't know what kind of computers you thought existed in 83, but 3D graphics is really a questionable claim. Yes there were things like Bards Tale and Ultima's dungeons, but the same effects had been done on the 2600. The C64 did have much better graphics and sound quality, and certainly had more storage space, but 3D graphics were not the driving force to move people off of the 2600 and on to the C64. There are also benefits to PC gaming beyond it's superior graphics. One is it's dramatically lower cost. Partly due to the fact that you already have a computer for other purposes. PC gaming is far from dead, and is unlikely to ever go away. It just doesn't draw the revenue that the consoles draw. In fact, Solitaire on windows, may be the most played video game ever.

Again, as you even note, there wasn't a crash. There was just a shift to a new platform. Maybe we should just rename "the video game crash" to "the Atari 2600 crash", as that would be far more accurate.

Re:Buried lead: PS2 outselling PS3, still.

[elrous0]

Yeah, but the even bigger question is "Are people buying it as a game machine or just as a blu-ray player?" I own both a 360 and PS3, and I use my PS3 almost exclusively for blu-ray movies. Good news for blu-ray, bad news for game developers doing PS3 exclusives.

The PS3 has to do more than just sell hardware. It has to start selling games. And, right now, the 360 is absolutely crushing it on game sales (Guitar Hero 3, for example sold almost 8 times as many 360 copies as PS3 copies).

Re:I'll buy that...

[pthor1231]

They already have had a Final Fantasy release, it's just not called Final Fantasy, its Lost Odyssey. It's created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the same one who made the original Final Fantasy and every single one since, plus a boatload of other awesome games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hironobu_Sakaguchi). It even has Nobuo Uematsu doing the music as well. Frickin awesome is all I can say.

Re:Not shocking..

[SuiteSisterMary]

Sony usurped nintendo because nintendo made a dire mistake (didn't understand technology), in this "competition" it was quite artificial. I should have qualified the comment "Market economics does not necessarily apply", with 'it is more complex then 'simple' economics'.

No. Sony usurped Nintendo for exactly one reason: they remembered how the market and the business model works.

To make a long story short, the Nintendo model had these main points:

1. Games come on cartridges
2. We, Nintendo, make the cartridges
3. You, the developer, beg us to make cartridges for your games
4. Minimum order of X hundred thousand. Three to six month turn around time. And you can only have five games a year. Oh, and we, Nintendo, approve those games.

What this meant was that, for example, if your game did better than you thought, there'd be a three to six month lag before you could get more product on the shelf. If you wern't sure how a game was going to do, you couldn't test the waters with a small run.

In other words, Nintendo was being a fairly typical market big boy.

So Sony comes along, builds the Playstation, and says 'Hey, let's use CDs. More space, sure, but mainly, a) it's $.50/copy to press rather than $20 just to build the cart, b) you can crank out a few hundred thousand over a weekend, and c) lets ask the devs what they want!

It's the most amusing of irony that PS1 beat Nintendo, the PS2 turned Sony *into* Nintendo, and the PS3 was beaten by Microsoft in pretty much exactly the same way that Sony beat Nintendo. The Xbox is, and always has been, about the developers. The 360's capabilities were decided, in part, by screenshots of Gears of War at various processor/memory/gpu combinations beside cost figures.

It's actually all quite fascinating; if you're interested, read Game Over by David Scheff (I think that's the name spelling), Revolutionaries at Sony, and Opening the Xbox, and Inside the Xbox 360. In that order. I think those are the two Xbox titles; they're both by Dean Takahashi, so you should be able to find them. I think that's how you spell his name. You'll have to excuse me, the Lysdexia is strong with me today.

Re:Could be

[Moonpie Madness]

There's a reason people stick with old versions of Windows, VHS, DVD, etc.

But stores stop stocking nice SDTVs. Broadcasts require either a new TV or one of those receivers, and some folks are dummies about that stuff.

You're right though, I prefer my SDTVs to my HDTV when watching SD broadcasts over U-Verse. It just looks a lot better. Still, nice HD TVs are the way of the future. No getting around it. And they do have many benefits.

Re:Buried lead: PS2 outselling PS3, still.

[drinkypoo]

Indeed, I do see. And who would not want to get a decent hi def player "for free"?

If the system plays the games I want to play, then I will buy it.

Okay, I won't buy a system from either Sony or Microsoft, at least not new. And I won't buy games new, either. I don't feel like providing either with licensing revenue. I have both PS2 and Xbox; the Xbox boots to XBMC and I will use it to watch a movie shortly. I intend to do the same with an Xbox 360 when the copy protection issues settle out a bit (probably long after it's a hot new system.) Sony can go piss up a rope, their system isn't as potentially useful as the Xbox 360 for "homebrew" software.

I realize that most people don't care about the evil of video game manufacturers. But anyway.

Not at all. XBox 360 uses hdmi 1.2, which has only 8 bit color. PS3 has hdmi 1.3, giving 10 bit and higher color resolution, which is supported by recent HD displays like the Samsung ln5281. The difference is very obvious, just look at the washed out black and saturated regions on an 8 bit display. Once you notice the difference you will never be ignore it again, sorry :-)

The difference, while noticeable, is not that amazing.

You also need a very expensive TV to even notice.

Once burned, twice shy. I expect Microsoft still has high failure rates even with new production. The noise out there about it has certainly not died down.

Mostly because of Sony fans, not actual Xbox 360 owners.

Re:Could be

[twistedsymphony]

1. Cost.

On a size for size comparison, meaning 32" SD vs 32" HD HDTVs really arn't any more expensive than good quality SDTVs were about 5-10 years ago, it's just that SDTV prices have dropped to help get them off the shelves and most people look at much larger screens when looking at HDTV.

2. Standard definition picture quality.

That all depends on if you know what you're doing/what you're buying. While I'll conceed that joe consumer doesn't really understand the technology if you buy an HDTV with a Faroudja DCDi processor, or a stand alone up converter, (Oppo also makes DVD players with this processor) then your SDTV content will never have looked better. Most people don't factor that in when looking for a TV though.

3. Cost of content.

That all depends on what kind of content you're viewing. All current generation games cost exactly the same whether you view them in SD or HD, and even the Wii can benifit from HDTV since it supports progressive scan and widescreen. Similarly most DVD content is also progressive scan and widescreen and with a good scaler like the aforementioned Faroudja in either your player or your TV will create a better picture than your SDTV tube is capable of. While the prices of Blu-Ray movies is a bit more than DVDs, you can usually find them for the same price if you shop around, it also doesn't usually cost any more to rent one over the other, at least not at any of the places I've seen.

4. Amount of content.

with the exception of the Wii all new video game content is HD, and as stated before with the right processor you'll get a better picture for SD broadcasts, DVDs, and other SD content. There are thousands of DVDs and last generation games that suppored EDTV (progressive scan/widescreen) that were not able to reach their full graphical potential on SD sets but CAN be fully realized on an HDTV. Becides most new movies and popular older movies are arriving on Blu-Ray and available through numerous download on-demand services, not to mention most of the popular TV stations (NBC, ABC, CBS, etc.) as well as most of the premium stations (HBO Stars, Cinemax, etc.) are broadcasting in HD now too, and it's only getting better as time goes on.

5. Cost of accessories.

like what exactly? the rental fee for a DVR from my cable provider is the same if it's SD or HD, as far as cables go the difference between RCA interconnects and HDMI is inconsequential as long as you're comparing similar quality products and not cheapo RCAs to rip-off Monster HDMIs. Go hit up monoprice [monoprice.com] if you don't believe me

6. The fact that I already own an SDTV.

You got me there, but I've yet to find any new technology that I was able to own without buying it.

Ultimately, not everyone is you, and not everyone has the same needs as you. I'm sure there are quite a few people who don't need or want an HDTV or HD content, but I know I personally don't watch TV but instead play video games, and I have over 400 DVD movies in my collection all supporting progressive scan and widescreen. My display is a projector in a home theater room and when I made the jump from an ED projector to an HD projector the difference was night and day... the HD projector I bought didn't cost any more than the ED projector when I bought it 3 years before, all of my old content looked far and wide better (because I specifically bought a projector that uses a Faroudja DCDi) and the Xbox 360 and Wii games that I had been playing already looked much better. I don't have a Blu-Ray player, but I do rent HD movies through the Xbox Live marketplace... Of course I also place a high value on the fidelity of my picture and sound.