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Game sales grow regardless of economic problems

12 November 2008 3:27 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 3 comments

While the sale of video games dropped 21 percent in the third quarter in Japan, sales reported in the UK and the United States continued to grow despite the very visible economic woes. NPD Group, GfK Chart-Track Ltd. and Enterbrain Inc. all reported that video game sales grew by 15 percent in the third quarter and 8 percent in the United States. Overall, the sales of the three combined markets rose just 1 percent with Japan keeping the figure down.

"2007 was a banner year for the Japanese software market with the titles released in the third quarter of 2008 not being as highly anticipated as those released during the same time period in 2007," said Ricky Tanimoto, a global marketing analyst at Enterbrain. "Also, software titles generally have stronger launch sales in Japan, which represent a large percentage of the total sales in Japan compared to the US and Britain."

He said that overall video games sales in Japan will be largely unaffected by economic problems during the holiday season. "New portable hardware systems like Sony's PSP-3000 and Nintendo's DSi will prove to be driving market forces in Japan throughout the 2008 holiday season," he said. The UK market is gearing up for its best-ever fourth quarter performance.

The top title in the U.S. during the quarter was Madden NFL 09 with 2.96 million unit sales, followed closely by Nintendo's Wii Fit at 1.28 million units. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed came in at third place with 1.42 million sales.

Permalink to this article | Topic: Consoles

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Discuss this article!
gnovak1 (Junior Member) 12 November 2008 14:06
That's because we play games to take our minds off the economic woes. [ + quote]
ugc (Member) 12 November 2008 14:59
I buy games to SAVE money. Keeps me from going out and spending much more. [ + quote]
Mez (Senior Member) 18 November 2008 7:24
That may change as things get worse. Right now homes and cars are greatly effected. That will trickel down. People that have no income are still spending savings. As they run out of money the echonomy will get worse. My brother in law the architect, will probably not get work for a year. Too bad he does not have that much savings. [ + quote]