There is a little feeling of 'holding our breath' right now in the industry, waiting to see how all this will unfold. Console transitions always make the publishing community nervous. |
There is a whiff of success. |
There simply are more options for entertainment these days outside of traditional toys. |
They did a great job of creating the hype. The 360 has largely been out-of-stock at retail since its launch last November. So clearly, selling out is one sign of performance, but you can't say that its market potential has been even close to tested with the limited supplies available. |
Things are likely to get worse before they get better. |
This is such an interesting direction for McDonald's, |
This is such an interesting direction for McDonald's, ... This could encourage kids to go to McDonald's to play games. It is like the kids' version of Starbucks' wireless hot spots. |
This is such an interesting direction for McDonald's. This could encourage kids to go to McDonald's to play games. It is like the kids' version of Starbucks' wireless hot spots. |
This is the year when we will see what works and what fails. |
We expect this will add significant dollars to the PC game market size. |
We think that it could be a landmark year. They're definitely on the top of everyone's Christmas list. |
We're in a transition period, so a lot of dollars are being saved for new video game consoles. And there are more choices vying for consumer dollars, and more consumers holding on to their money in anticipation of new consoles. Although a lot of people are disappointed _ especially publishers whose sales aren't living up to expectations _ I wouldn't say this is doom or gloom. It's going to be an interesting number of months until everything settles down. |
Well certainly the Star was (pun-intended) Star Wars . With three in the top 10 titles for the year, this movie-based property saw very strong sales. That said, other movie-based games fared less well. |
While total industry sales have continued to decline, the power of entertainment in driving sales can be seen through the incredible success of franchises such as Star Wars and Dora the Explorer. The Star Wars franchise had a great year, contributing to the increase enjoyed by the Action Figures and Building Sets categories. |
While we have seen retail sales of PC games decrease for several years now, we know from talking to consumers about their online gaming behaviors that playing games on the PC, whether it's via online casual sites or through massive multi-player online (MMO) subscription play, has been increasing. |