US Video Game Sales Take Recessionary Hit - Not Recession Resistant As Once Thought

Most folks in the video and online gaming industry believe the sector to be recession proof or at least recession resistant.
Why? Because if more people are laid off then they are stuck at home with nothing to do, so they play video games.
Since more and more younger people who grew up with video games are now in the workforce they continue to play them.

Thus, it stands to reasonable logic that during troubling times of high unemployment that video game sales would be robust compared to other industries.
Unfortunately, this logic does not hold water in reality.

According to the industry associations in the video game sector the first quarter of 2009 was devastating and posted decrease of more than 20 percent over last year's numbers.

Some companies showed sales down as much as 50%, but Microsoft's Xbox came in with only mild disappointment of 7% decrease over first quarter of 2008, which but industry standards is a huge win for the company considering the state of the sector currently.
Nintendo's sales were over 40% down, and it appears that there is a huge migration to Microsoft Xbox and this trend will continue.

There will always be winners and losers, and market share migration to the better products that consumers choose.

Still, as a whole things have finally gone South for the so-called recession proof business model.

Is there an upside? Yes, as a matter of fact until this quarter things were okay, not breaking any speed records but they didn't fall off a cliff either, like so many other commercial sectors of our economy.
Video games seem to be the last hit and thus, it stands to reason that as the economy recovers they will be the first to recover with it.

Please consider all this and happy gaming.