EEDAR’s Jesse Divnich recently disclosed the number of new games for 2009: 1,099 up just slightly from 1,092 in 2008. According to Divnich, this only slight increase doesn’t bode well for the console gaming community.
In an interview with GameSpot Divnich comments, “For just the current generation home consoles (PS3/360/Wii), 2009’s release quantities increase the total availability of games to consumers by 55 percent. Unless retail shelf space grows by the same amount, and it won’t, than the retail shelf life for an average game decreases dramatically.”
Divnich also points out that once console titles achieve a certain appeal and/or market presence, they occupy a permanent spot on retailer’s shelves, thereby creating less and less space for new titles. According to Divnich the number of new releases is outpacing the industry’s growth. “It does mean the average new release is producing fewer unit sales than in previous years.” An odd dichotomy in an economic that is seeing game production costs skyrocketing.
However, and this is a big however, Divnich says that digital distribution sales were NOT included in the research data. According to EEDAR’s research, 2009’s largest gainers were Nintendo’s Wii and DS platforms. Both Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3 saw flat or slightly decreased releases. But again, this data does not include digital deliver methods, something that both consoles increased over the past year.
Based on peak release trends from previous generation consoles as well as industry consolidations, Divnich expects the number of new releases to be on the decline in 2010. Adding to the decline of packaged goods on retailer’s shelves will be increased delivery of games via downloads, as well as the continued development of streaming or ‘cloud’ based gaming solutions.
Tags: console gaming, digital distribution, EEDAR, Jesse Divnich, playstation 3, Wii, xbox 360
