U.S. Game Sales Falls

The shaky U.S. economy has finally effected the gaming market. For the most part the gaming market has been resilient to the recession, but the NPD’s July report shows the game market was down 26 percent year-on-year with a value of $797.7million. That may still sound like a lot, but that is the worst single month since October 2006.

“There is no getting around the fact that videogame sales in the new physical retail channel suffered its lowest month since October 2006,” NPD analyst Anita Frazier confessed.

There’s no doubt that rising game prices coupled with fears of a double dip recession have led to this downturn in the gaming market. Many American consumers just don’t have the extra 60 bucks lying around to go out and buy games.

Software sales fell 17 percent to $336.2 million. Of the 17 new titles that made it to the market, only eight sold over 100 thousand units.

The NPD remains confident that the 2011 U.S. market will be one of growth come the end of the year. Good luck with that.

What needs to be done to increase sales? Is the economy to blame? Or is it the extremely high prices of video games? It’s probably a combination of the two.