Game Sales Declining A Thing Of Concern

Is the falling sales of games and hardware especially games year after year a cause of concern. I keep hearing all this talk that Tablets and Phones are slowly going to make the big games we like to play obsolete. Even in a recent article on ign Peter Molyneux states that next gen consoles are going to struggle to keep up with phones and tablets. Granted I like smaller games and all but I still want the bigger games to survive or gaming will be dead to me. I just feel there is this big change thats going to happen and it won't be good.

Games sales are not declining.

Large budget games will not go away.

There there, everything will be all right. shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Peter Molyneux is the only guy in the business who can be wrong more than your local meteorologist and still keep his job.

I don't think big budget games are going anywhere. If there is money to be made it will continue.

If there are any reports of game sales falling it's probably because of the all too long stagnant console life-cycle of this generation.

Console sales have been dropping off a fair amount, but it's the end of a very long console cycle, that is to be expected. All in all the industry is healthy and will be bigger then ever when the next generation hits, you can count on that.

Nobody is really completely sure if the drop will continue, or how much further it might go.

There is some presumption that the long console cycle is impacting sales, that the economy figures into it, and that some unknown amount of casual type income is lost to mobile/social (with another unknown amount being made up by those sources, now that most everyone is also in that area). New consoles will be an interesting test. If a bottom to the drops is found than there might be at least some presumed stability, but without knowing the situation ends up looking potentially dire. Or if the adoption rate on new consoles is poor.

i do hope that games don't start going towards the phones. i kind of don't see it happening just because of how consoles are. it's a home entertainment system. consoles are starting to become more than just video games.

its just going down right now as it's coming to the end of the cycle. there are rumors of new consoles coming out in the next 3 years. nintendo is bring out the wii u soon.

Has anybody thought that many of those sales were of the more casual type of gamers ... that now has seen that their gaming can be done on phone / tablet games? It seems pretty obvious to me , they went for a crowd that in whim will stop purchasing games just because they are not so into them like we are .... a fake growth we have had I think , and now developers expecting to keep selling as they have now see that their numbers aint adding up ... the market is just going back to were it was before this generation.

@Salarn said:

Games sales are not declining.

Large budget games will not go away.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/8/3620514/npd-video-game-sales-october-2012

I remember hearing similar concerns like 5 years ago. The figures, even in the article linked above me, refer solely to retail games sold in "brick and mortar stores." You pick up the box from the shelf. The box gets scanned. You pay for it and walk/drive home or you had the box mailed to your home.

Any purchase you've made on Steam or even through a console-based download service is not recorded as a "sale" in the figures those articles and your fear are sourced from.

I want another topic from you in bold letters when the next consoles come out from microsoft and sony and people are saying game sales are on the rise.

Yeah, I'm kind of feeling the same way. I just hope it's because this was an extended generation and stuff, and new consoles = growth.

Not declining, becoming more obtuse. Triple A titles are well and good, but it's the next and next that serve to win. Cost effective games are very profitable.

@Sooty said:

@Salarn said:

Games sales are not declining.

Large budget games will not go away.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/8/3620514/npd-video-game-sales-october-2012

It's also worth pointing out that the NPD only tracks physical game sales, so downloadable titles and mobile games aren't included.

They exclude 30% of game sales and then say sales are down! MATHS!

http://www.theesa.com/facts/index.asp

Hey guys, I heard PC gaming is dead too.

Hey guys, I heard PC gaming is dead too.

It's becoming a little too "hit" based if you ask me. Same thing happened to music and movies and it was up to the indie artists to keep things interesting. I can see games heading that way and it's a bit of a bummer.

It's becoming a little too "hit" based if you ask me. Same thing happened to music and movies and it was up to the indie artists to keep things interesting. I can see games heading that way and it's a bit of a bummer.

@MikkaQ said:

It's becoming a little too "hit" based if you ask me. Same thing happened to music and movies and it was up to the indie artists to keep things interesting. I can see games heading that way and it's a bit of a bummer.

This. I think the main problem is the diversity in gaming. How many Assassin'gs Creed will we play till we get bored? How many Halos, Call of Duty, Resident Evil, Dead Space, Zelda, Super Mario? And how many similar franchises will we play through? Battlefield, Call of Duty, Medal of Honour? 
 
Finding some new experiences to me has been kind of hard with so many sequels and similar games.

@Jeust: That's the thing about gamers, they are too diverse. If you or I become bored of a game it's not representative of gamers as a whole. There more people new to games every year that AC5 or MarioParty13 is their first of the series and it's fresh to them. If a fan of a series gets bored or outgrows that series it's okay and honestly expected.

There are enough games and enough genres of games that there will always be a game to play when one wants to play a game.

I think it's about time we listed digital sales in the NPD...

Year after year, I see NPD showing games sales declining. Year after year I notice my physical games library isn't getting much bigger, but my steam library is gargantuan.

This is the seventh year of a console cycle. I am pretty sure that everyone that would want to buy one of these systems has done it. As for decreased game sales, the last two years have been pretty bad. I haven't purchased nearly as many games as I normally do. This can also be attributed to the long console cycle. Many developers are saving their new IPs for the new consoles. So, everything they are shitting out is a reboot, rehash, or sequel to an existing franchise. I have nothing against sequels. But, good lord, most franchises this generation have at least 4 or 5 installments in them, just on this set of hardware. Some franchises have as many as seven entries.

They always slide towards the end of a console generation, and this gen seemed pretty long while we still have a year left. If you remember at this point in the PS2s life new games were down to $40.

Personally, towards the end of a cycle like were experiencing I like to look backwards and find things I missed. If all of the games look the same, what advantage does a game I've never played that comes out tomorrow for $60 have over a game I've never played that game out 2 years ago for $15? People just have to get excited about new, and new games right now don't really feel that way.

I do wonder what tablets will look like in 5 years vs the then aging consoles. I mean, they will still be tablets and I probably won't want to play games on them, but tech wise they might be pretty impressive and developers might have figured some things out.

Game sales are going down because we're coming up on the next generation of consoles. They'll skyrocket again when everyone is pumped about the next gen consoles.

@Jeust: Well percentage wise world population is increasing along with the average standard of living that allows people have access to games. The sales of games are not decreasing, overall spending in games is higher than ever, it's just not limited first hand box sales as the report leads the reader to believe.

Download Games (Steam / Console) are not counted.

Second hand game sales (used) are not counted.

In game purchases (DLC / Microtransations) are not counted.

However, as far as the annual or 'evergreen' titles of games go, there are a large population of gamers out there who are the one or two game a year shoppers. There are plenty of people who ONLY play madden or COD every year, and they are perfectly happy with it. This is backed up by internal user tracking when you see numerous accounts with nothing but achievements from their one or two games.

As to the topic from the original poster. Sales are not declining as a whole. Big 'AAA' games will not go away. I'll concede that it's very hard to have more than a few $60~100+ million dollar FPS come out in the same year and have people care, but there will still be at least a few options.

Game sales are going down because we're coming up on the next generation of consoles. They'll skyrocket again when everyone is pumped about the next gen consoles.

didn't AC3 do 3.5 million copies in its first week. as long as games keep pulling in those type of number i don't think we should worry.

I'm tired of the game archetypes that were established this gen that have been milked dry (Assassin's Creed, 3rd person shooters, COD clones). I hope the gaming brain-trust can truly innovate again without ending up at pay-to-win scenarios the guys were joking about on the latest bombcast.