This year has not been friendly to the video game industry. Game consoles and video game titles have seen a fall in sales since the recession hit the third quarter of 2008. Since last month, there has been a significant decline in the sale of video games. For the current and following month, however, forecast says sales for video games is about to recover thanks to some fantastic titles.
Independent marketing research group NPD stated that sales of gaming consoles for last month fell down to 23% and video game titles sales went down 18%. Slashed price tags for the PS3 and XBOX-360 helped a bit, but not enough to boost the overall console sales. It is now estimated that a total of $20bn to $21bn will be generated this year compared to last year’s $21.3bn.
The weight brought about by slump in sales have been felt by employees from several video game developers and dealers namely Electronic Arts and Gamestop. Video game retailer Gamestop said they are looking forward to a decline in sales of up to 11% and has also been detached from Goldman Sachs’ conviction buy list and EA announced it will have to let go 1,500 of their employees but the matter of when remains to be seen.
Sales among the three gaming consoles have been fairly up and down due to competitive price cuts and exclusivity of highly anticipated game titles. The Playstation 3 from Sony has reported an increase in sales in Japan and Europe because of the slash of up to $100 Sony had issued and they are hoping to get more sales next year on both hardware and software with the release of God of War III. On the downside, their new version of the PSP, PSPGo, has not seen any considerable boost in sales since was released last October 2009 in the US.
This month’s video game sales has created new hopes as Activision’s release of the highly anticipated “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,” sequel to the successful “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.” Other upcoming titles are also projected to boost title sales for the month of November with Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed 2” and Wii’s “New Super Mario Bros.”
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has given its creators their record sales for 2009 with gross income amounting to $310 million in North America and the UK alone. According to the company, Sources from Activision said that they sold about 4.7 million copies for within only 24 hours after its first release date.
The game title is expected to outmatch the success of last year’s most successful game, GTA IV, where it sold 3.6 million copies worldwide, lesser than the figure of CoD:MW2 copies sold in only two countries. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has a price tag of $60 or £36.55.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 puts players in real-life combat of today’s modern time and players can choose to play in single player or multiplayer mode online. It is available on ether PC Windows, Playstation 3 and XBOX 360.