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The Almighty Buck Entertainment Games

2005 Game Sales Set Record 32

Posted by Zonk from the still-glad-its-over dept.
Despite a Holiday slump, 2005 game sales hit all-time highs. Gamasutra reports: "The growth was largely driven through an expanding market for handheld systems. Previously dominated by Nintendo's Game Boy series, 2005 saw the market expand to comfortably support three handhelds: the existing Game Boy Advance, Nintendo's 'third pillar' in the Nintendo DS, and Sony's PlayStation Portable. Portable software sales rose to $1.4 billion, a rise of 42 percent over 2004. The Game Boy Advance, due to its longer lifespan and greater install base, still took the majority of the handheld game market, claiming 52 percent of portable game sales."
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2005 Game Sales Set Record More

2005 Game Sales Set Record

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  • iirc in 2005 I bought the least number of games since 1995.
    It wasn't a good year, not really a lot of great games were released.
    2006 is going to be different.
    • I bought a record number of games (for me at least). I've bought games for all my systems, including DS, PSP, PC, Xbox, PS2 and Gamecube. I don't know the tally, but I bought a few games each month. There's been a lot of variety this year, and lots of great experiences.
    • I managed to find 5 new games I liked enough to buy this year. WipEout Pure, Lumines, Shadow of the Colossus, Devil May Cry 3, and Dragon Quest 8.

  • I thought it was all doom and gloom (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @07:28PM (#14473268) Journal
    Turns out people wanted to just play something different from endless [Insert Title] [Insert Year|$i++] style games where nothing new is added.

    You can't blame game companies. When tomb raider sold a gazillion installments game execs must have thought they had found the golden goose. (I do not want you to fantasize about Lara Croft lying golden eggs you sick pervert)

    Now games do not have to be innovative, many GBA DS games are not really THAT innovative BUT you have to add something new or a really big improvement for the gaming public to warm up.

    Oh well seems all the doom stories one way or another were overrated. Again. So games are dying stories are out for the rest of the month. What can we use instead. BSD old buddy, how is that cough? Sun you look a bit under the weather.

    • Now games do not have to be innovative, many GBA DS games are not really THAT innovative BUT you have to add something new or a really big improvement for the gaming public to warm up.

      Your comment made me think just exactly how "innovative" a game has to be for me to buy it... And I decided that I would happy if they would port Myst to the DS. I would be even happier if they would port the sequels. And happier still if they would spice those ports up a bit, making them similar to Trace Memory.

      So, your comme
      • And I decided that I would happy if they would port Myst to the DS

        You know, I had the same thought earlier today. Actually I'm surprised that RTS games haven't found a home on the DS yet.
        • Yep. I don't need every game to be a Katamari Damacy. It just has to have some new energy and thinking behind it a new way to interact. If you think about it, that's what 'game' means. If you can boil you're game down to FPS or TPS, then you've essentially got a derivative game with a new story. While this is all fine and good, it get's old. That's where FEAR and RE4 come in.

          As to the RTS, yep I'll take StarCraftDS any day, spruce it up a bit. I'll take the Myst suggestion too, as I was preoccupied

          • Re:Excellent Thread (Score:3, Interesting)

            by damsa ( 840364 )
            What about Phoenix Wright and DS Trauma center. Both are radically different than anything else seen in games in the US. I am saddened that Capcom decided to pull Phoenix from the US market.
            • Huh? I thought Phoenix Wright got released here, and sold pretty well.

              Also, PW is the DS entry in a series of games in Japan.

              • Re:Excellent Thread (Score:3, Insightful)

                by damsa ( 840364 )
                Phoenix did get released in the US. But Capcom for some reason pulled it from their online store and copies are hard come by and used titles are going for upwards of 50 dollars on ebay.
                PW actually was a game in Japan for the GBA ported to the DS. With one case that makes use of DS's many different input schemes. It's quite ingenious. There are games like that in Japan, where game play is totally different than FPS, RTS. Rythm games, dance games, Nintendogs, things like that. I was looking forward to the P
      • I wish someone would port the Tex Murphy series to the DS, sans the video and most of the audio. Those games are some of my favorite overall.

        But one can only dream.

    • "Lara Croft lying golden eggs"

      Why would she lie? [grin]
  • 2005 Console gaming sets record. not one mention of pc games in it.

  • Home Consoles Did Terribly (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If it weren't for the extremely strong sales of the Nintendo DS and the launch of the Sony PSP, 2005 would've been a horrible year, so the analysts' concerns were completely warranted. The home console market is going stagnant because of increased prices for consumers and a lack of original content. I don't see how that is even disputable...sales of home console hardware and software was dismal in 2005, even considering that the current generation is ending. It seems like only Nintendo has figured that out,
    • I agree, though the gameboy advance still outsold them both... Actually, I don't know a single person that has purchased a PSP or DS yet, yet I know several people who purchased Gameboy Advance games over Xmas. I thought that was rare, but I guess it is quite common. the NintendoPLayers.com link you mention claims that the DS won out strong in Japan. So, the PSP is the least popular worldwide then? Their are huge racks of PSP movies at the 2 local retailers in my area, yet I have never seen a single pe

  • Doom and gloom is actually true... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rosebud128 ( 930419 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @10:41PM (#14473892)
    I know this will sound fanboyish, but without the DS and its strong sales (along with the GBA), the average would have been a decline. The PSP does not exactly have a strong software line-up. And console sales have been dwindling.

    From the article:

    "Total sales for the year were over $10.5 billion, an improvement of six percent over 2004's $9.9 billion and narrowly edging out 2002's $10.2 billion."

    This does not mean there are more customers now than before. It simply means people are paying more.

    The PSP is more than $200 (with $50 games). The Xbox 360 is $400 (with its games $60). And the DS costs more than a gamecube.

    Development costs are going up everywhere (except for the DS). So this 'extra money' will probably not counter the increased costs it takes for new software.

    In 2006, the PS3 will cost at least around $500 with around $60 price for games. And PS3 games will not be cheap to develop.

    The measuring stick for the games industry needs to be actual gamers, rather than how much money is being spent. If everything costed twice as much and there were less gamers, the article would still say, "Games market had grown!" when, in fact, it actually shrunk.
    • I think what development teams need to realise is that not every game has to be such a graphical leap over the previous one. I honestly believe that this will be the generation of consoles where we will be seeing a massive amount of highly visual games as well as a massive amount of low visual games that rely only on gameplay. Customers just need to understand that graphics dont make a game. Thats pretty much the only thing raising up development costs so high.
    • The measuring stick for the games industry needs to be actual gamers, rather than how much money is being spent.

      Actual money being spent is a useful statistic for the game companies. Actual number of gamers doesn't really help a lot, and in fact could look more damaging to companies

      For example: Sony's much touted 100-million PS2 units. While that sounds like a lot (and it is), you have to think how many of those are secondary units in a household or replacements for a dead one. I know I'm on my second

      • Actual money being spent is a useful statistic for the game companies. Actual number of gamers doesn't really help a lot, and in fact could look more damaging to companies

        So we cannot have reports that may be damaging to companies? If the industry is lying to itself, then it is in worse shape than we thought.

        For example: Sony's much touted 100-million PS2 units. While that sounds like a lot (and it is), you have to think how many of those are secondary units in a household or replacements for a dead one...

  • Wow, GBA still rockin' (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Phantasmo ( 586700 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @01:30AM (#14474541)
    The Game Boy Advance, due to its longer lifespan and greater install base, still took the majority of the handheld game market, claiming 52 percent of portable game sales.
    So if the PSP is dominating the handheld market with its distant third, does that mean the Gamecube is dominating the home console market with its distant third?
    Just curious, because whenever we talk about the PSP, we always say that it's, uh... dominating the market. Even though its selling less, has less games, and is making less money. *cough*

    • Re:Wow, GBA still rockin' (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      In the last week of 2005, the number of XBox 360s sold was approximately 1/32nd of DS sales the same week. [n-next.com] By comparison, the PSP sold about a third of total DS sales that week. See, it's not doing so bad!
      • I've seen this link cited before but never really read it. How accurate can this claim to be? 121 XBoxes sold in the entirity of Japan last week? One hundred and freaking twenty one? I knew the situation in Japan was extremely bad for MS, but I had no idea they were selling like 1 console per city.

        And yes, I know they sold like 12K 360s. Still.
  • This is where a lot of the RIAA and MPAA's lost sales have gone. They're putting out mostly crap so people are finding other ways to entertain themselves.

    If you added up the total sales for Games, Music and Movies, the total amount probably hasn't changed much in the last ten years.
  • "The growth was largely driven through an expanding market for handheld systems."

    Maybe it's just sloppy language, but I think this is mistaking a result for a cause. The (revenue) growth may have been MAINLY in the handheld categories, but it was driven by:
    - Hollywood failing to generate a single new idea for the past 3(?) years. Despite the lack of ideas, movie tickets are now somewhere just south of $10 each, making a "movie night" for a family of 4, plus dinner at a moderate restaurant, popcorn, pop =

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