LUCIDMEDIA

Lucid Gaming – February 09

Written by Adam A. Donaldson Friday, 30 January 2009 13:18

In the News

Good year for consoles; bad for PCs

Total sales for consoles, games and accessories topped $22 billion last year, which is more than double what the North American box office did during the same period. Pretty good news in the midst of a global economic crisis, but it wasn’t good news all around. But while sales were up for games played on the Nintendo, X-Box and Playstation systems, games played on your PC saw a 23 per cent decrease. According to the Entertainment Software Association, PC game sales only accounted for $704.1 million in sales versus the $8.9 billion in sales for console games. Also in the ESA’s report were statistics on games sold and 43 per cent of the games sold last year were rated E for “Everyone,” while M for “Mature” games only made up 15.9 per cent of the market. Overall, market watchers are saying that the 2008 sales figures seem to indicate that the gaming industry is more or less “recession-proof.”

Video Games lead Sony profit decline

Last week, Sony reported that their earnings were down by 95 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008 with their electronics division leading the downturn with a 29.3 per cent decrease in sales. Of course, a big chunk of that are the low sales of Sony’s Playstation 3 platform for which sales were down 32.2 per cent over the holiday season in 2007. In order to reverse that trend, Sony has made an exclusive publishing agreement with PopCap to bring five titles to the Playstation Network. PopCap is a maker of games for all ages, and by signing to the PS3 it seems that Sony is aiming to take a piece of the proverbial Nintendo Wii pie. Time will tell.

Free Wiis

If your in, around or passing through Burlington, Ontario during the month of February, consider taking a drive over to 3350 Fairview Street to see the newly opened Gamer Doc location. Why? Because throughout the month they’ll be giving away a Nintendo Wii every week to celebrate their grand opening. "We want everyone to visit our store and enjoy the Gamer Doc experience, so we are celebrating the entire month of February," said James Bajc, store owner.  "Everyone is invited to come in and sign-up to win a Wii console or a store credit if they already have one.  We will be holding a drawing every Friday at 7:00 p.m., and will announce the winner's name.  If they are not present at that time, we will contact them to come in and claim their prize."

Charts

January’s numbers represent a huge let down post Christmas. For example, the top game, Wii Sports, sold approximately one-sixth of the number of copies for the first month of 2009 that it did for the last of 2008. As for hardware, Wii returns to the top spot after being slightly outpaced by the DS for the holidays, but the number of systems sold is down by nearly 80 per cent for January. Not entirely unexpected of course, there’s still a question about long term trends in the video game industry going into the continually murky economic waters. One interesting stat from last month’s chart is that the only ranking Playstation game is for the PS2. It’s another bad sign for the PS3, which continues to struggle as the most expensive of the systems.

Top 20 Game Sales for January

1. Wii Sports (Wii/Nintendo) - 507,639/21,357,531
2. Wii Fit (Wii/Nintendo) - 421,833/5,588,495
3. Wii Play (Wii/Nintendo) - 414,993/10,436,796
4. Call of Duty: World at War (X360/Activision) - 396,525/3,281,971
5. Mario Kart Wii (Wii/Nintendo) - 365,342/6,066,429
6. New Super Mario Bros (DS/Nintendo) - 238,159/6,904,270
7. Gears Of War 2 (X360/Microsoft) - 221,118/2,975,174
8. Mario Kart DS (DS/Nintendo) - 209,069/5,279,748
9. Call of Duty: World at War (PS3/Activision) - 206,184/1,496,800
10. Guitar Hero: World Tour (Wii/Activision) - 195,757/1,727,535
11. Left 4 Dead (X360/Electronic Arts) - 189,585/1,187,973
12. Guitar Hero: World Tour (X360/Activision) - 186,855/1,223,153
13. Lego Indiana Jones: Original Adventures (X360/LucasArts) - 183,889/2,023,499
14. Kung Fu Panda (X360/Activision) - 169,127/1,768,627
15. Pokemon Diamond/Pearl (DS/Nintendo) - 166,326/6,589,427
16. Nintendogs (DS/Nintendo) - 165,001/8,555,832
17. Madden NFL 09 (X360/Electronic Arts) - 159,106?2,106,213
18. Brain Training (DS/Nintendo) - 156,365/4,391,483
19. Rock Band 2 (Wii/Electronic Arts) - 145,979/352,815
20. Madden NFL 09 (PS2/Electronic Arts) - 138,602/1,096,766

Hardware Sales - January

Nintendo Wii: 607,639/21,457,531
Nintendo DS: 426,168/32,420,436
X-Box 360: 399,858/16,107,727
Playstation 3: 263,800/15,799,161
Playstation Portable: 255,919/7,688,552
Playstation 2: 138,737/49,793,657
Total Units Sold: 2,092,121

***All figures courtesy of VG Chartz.com