NPD Cheers! “Game Industry” is in full decline

PlayStation 2 203.1K
PlayStation 3 710.4K
PSP 293.9K
Xbox 360 819.5K
Wii 1.26M
Nintendo DS 1.70M

CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* (360) |Nov-09| 4.20M
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* (PS3) |Nov-09| 1.87M
SUPER MARIO BROS. 5 (WII) |Nov-09| 1.39M
ASSASSIN’S CREED II (360) |Nov-09| 794.7K
LEFT 4 DEAD 2 (360) |Nov-09| 744.0K
WII SPORTS RESORT* (WII) |Jul-09| 720.2K
WII FIT PLUS* (WII) |Oct-09| 679.0K
ASSASSIN’S CREED II (PS3) |Nov-09| 448.4K
DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS* (360) |Nov-09| 362.1K
MARIO KART W/ WHEEL (WII) |Apr-08| 315.0K

When holiday NPDs come out, with swarming ‘PR statements’ and cackling fanboys of all stripes, you have to scratch below the surface to find what the real story is. And the real story is that the “Game Industry” is in big trouble.

Even with the “strongest video game release ever!!!” of Modern Warfare 2, the “Game Industry” still slides in decline. Someone might say, “Oh, but the decline is only because of Wii’s YOY decline. It is not representative of Core Market decline.” OK, how about we take Wii sales, even if just the Expanded Market Wii sales, out of the picture entirely this generation? What do we get? This generation is showing nothing but a massive Core Market decline.

Look at the continued PS2 sales. I guarantee you that the NES or SNES/Genesis were not selling like that years going into the incoming generation. “It is because,” says a forum dweller, “that Sony is so amazing and so was the PS2 that it is still selling like it is!” No. What this says is that high horsepower and better graphics no longer matter. Sony would rather those PS2 sales go into the PS3. This mythical “PS2 userbase that has yet to upgrade” is laughable because it is dependent on the notion that the remaining PS2 userbase wants to upgrade. Maybe the graphics of the PS2 are “good enough” for many of them? Everyone “assumed” that once the PS3 came down in price, the PS2 userbase would go to the PS3. That isn’t happening.

When the last “biggest releasing game launch to occur” of Halo 3 came out, the Xbox 360 outsold the Wii for that month. Yet, Xbox 360, despite having massive Modern Warfare 2 sales on its side, still was behind 500k of the Wii that month, and Wii doesn’t have momentum on its side. Wii doesn’t even have major third party games on its side. It just shows how bad things are getting for the “Game Industry”.

You see those Mario Kart Wii sales? That is the future of Mario 5. Mario 5 will be sticking around, either bouncing around in the top ten list or hovering close outside it, for years to come. Mario 5 will never be obsolete.

If you’ve noticed, there are quite a number of forum dwellers going “zOMG, Reggie lost the bet, LOLzers!” When people accurately quote what Reggie says, they then resume on saying “zOMG, Reggie lost the bet, LOLzers!” While there is much stupid on the Internet, many of these people are intentionally saying it with full knowledge that it isn’t true. Remember, these are the same people who kept saying, on and on again, that Mario 5 was a ‘port’ of the DS with multiplayer ‘tacked on’. Even when confronted and shown that it was clearly a new game, they kept on saying it was a ‘port’ in face of it. It is not stupidity, it is intentional of what they are doing. I do not believe many of the forum dwellers are actual regular gamers like you or I (they have their viral marketing that they are paid to do). Meanwhile, Super Mario Brothers 5 is currently sold out at places like Amazon and even some Gamestops. He he he…