Recession finally catching up or do the new games just suck?

For awhile we were told video games were recession-proof. Some gamers held this up as a kind of trophy. This was good for the executives who were trying to convince their shareholders and potential investors not to pull their money out of a luxury industry during a recession. Parallels were drawn between the role of film during the great depression and the role games could play during this recession.

The predictions were proved true time and again throughout 2008 as hit game after hit game kept the monthly sales figures high. Towards the end of 2008 the analysts went over their numbers again and wondered out loud if video games had really been recession-proof at all. It turned out that while the business of video games was growing it wasn't growing as fast as it would be had it not been for slimmer wallets worldwide.

"Duh," was the overwhelming response to this revelation.

In the wake of the NPD group's July report on console gaming earlier this month a slew of reports appeared on the Internet as well as in the Wall Street Journal. 1up, a great one-stop source for all things NPD, reported that game sales in June saw the largest year-over-year drop in 9 years. The article that got me on the scent was by Tara Foulkrod at The Examiner entitled, Economy hits video game market.

Most of the articles on this topic quote the conclusions drawn by Anita Frazier (one of the analysts of the entertainment market for the NPD group): "This is one of the first months where I think the impact of the economy is clearly reflected in the sales numbers. While the aggregate of content may not be as strong as what we saw in the first half of last year, and while the consumer base willing to spend dollars on hardware at the current price points may be thinning, the size of the decline could also point to consumers deferring limited discretionary spending until a big event (must-have new title, hardware price cut) compels them to spend."

It's this analysis that I disagree with.

For starters, let's take a look at the "aggregate of content." Exhibit A: Notice the graph at the top of the article. The bars are the total sales of the top 10 best-selling console games at retail in a month and the lines show the number of sales the number one best-selling game achieved in that month.

Exhibit B is the set of tables below. They show the top 10 games for 2008 and 2009 respectively by sales in a month, as well as their scores on Metacritic. If there's a dash where the score would be it means that particular game/platform combination has already appeared in the table.

In simple terms, the games released in the first half of 2008 might have sold better, but they were also received better. Correlation doesn't imply causation, of course, but the stark  contrast  between the quality and target audience of 2008 and 2009's first-half hit games  seems to not be taken into adequate consideration. Also, just because people are spending less on games doesn't mean they need to be spending less on games.

The size of the decline could “point to consumers deferring limited discretionary spending until a big event” or it could point to consumers not just buying any old crap the industry decides to serve up. Bad games (amongst other things) almost killed console gaming in its infancy.

Not that 2009 hasn't seen some solid releases. To name a few, Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter 4, Prototype, and inFamous all did pretty well for themselves considering the franchises they hailed from and/or demographic they pandered to. There was no way they were going to compete with the likes of Grand Theft Auto and Metal Gear Solid, though.

So to answer my own question: Neither. The recession is not affecting the video game industry proportionally any more than it did from the outset. Recent game releases are above average quality (though I agree, none of them deserve a 90% or higher average score) but aren't as good as the AAA releases from last year. I also don't think that this year's big name releases appeal to as wide an audience as say, Grand Theft Auto, Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Metal Gear Solid did.

EDIT: Just found an article via reddit which says that four Ubisoft titles, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Red Steel 2, I am Alive, and Ghost Recon, have been pushed back to 2010. With BioShock 2, Singularity and Bayonetta all pushed back to 2010 it looks to be a long winter for the console stats. Perhaps the stuff that actually looks really good that's still slated for this year like Modern Warfare 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and Left 4 Dead 2 will bolster the numbers enough to keep the doom prophesying minimal. It would seem that only a runaway success on the Wii will impact sales significantly enough for that, though. New Super Mario Bros. Wii, anyone?