The economy is down but GameStop is up. Way up
Category: Industry, Posted: 03/18/2008 at 02:17PM CDT by Frank Ling, Editorial Director
The US economy is down. The housing market is down. But there is one thing that has shot up in spite of sluggish economic conditions -- video games. GameStop Corp. has a lot to be happy about because its fourth-quarter net income rose 46%.
The surge in strong video game sales is attributed to all the top games that have come out for gaming platforms across the board. To put this into dollars and cents GameStop made $189.8 million in net income compared to only $129.8 million from last year.
The increase in video game sales activity seems to go against the tide as far as money being tight. In addition to this the video game industry has gone under the gun and received intense fire from politicians and children's rights organizations that continue to try to pass and enforce laws that "protect" the public from so-called offensive game content.
So how is it possible that video games continue to increase in popularity in spite of these negative conditions? The answer is not very hard to determine. People like to be entertained and video games have evolved to such an extent that the high entertainment value is drawing more and more people into the gaming world--and this includes many new gamers that have entered the fold through casual gaming.
As long as the video game industry understands that superior content and fun draws customers, it should be continuing this upward trend for a while. Of course they could get lazy and start to crank out substandard sequel after sequel, (are you listening EA?) but hopefully game companies will get the message that quality means profits.
[via wallstreetjournal]
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Well, politicians have been out of the loop for a long time, and the continued success of the gaming industry shows that the general population simply doesn't agree with the government's anti-game agenda.
One thing I'd like to know is how home video sales are doing (DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray). We all hear about people not going to the movies as much, but perhaps this is more about peope electing for less expensive take-home entertainment in general, which home video and video games are both part of.
It sort of looks like video games are trouncing both DVD and music sales according to this short article from NPD Group...http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_080311.html
Hmmm, I wonder if all this pressure against video games is actually a conspiracy from the music and movie industry to try to kill off the game industry?
People never really stop spending, they just change where they spend it, and still end up with the same amount or less of the money in return. Never really changes
Way to don your tin foil hat, Quasar. I don't think that is at all improbable, though. Do you know one of the largest contributors of funds in the war against marijuana was Anheuser Bush? Don't get stoned people, get drunk. The only way to know is follow the paper trail. I hope some astute video game journalist follows up on that.