As we’ve often discussed on TG Daily, gaming can be quite a confounding market to track.
Reports this summer indicated gaming was at its lowest ebb since 2006, leading many to speculate the industry would take a long while to recover and adjust to a harsh new economic reality.
However, others believed big blockbuster franchises could bring things back, like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. Of course, there was also speculation that 3D, like many have hoped for movies, could boost gaming as well.
Well, the first part proved to be true, with Call of Duty having a huge first week. Variety reports that games sales are up, thanks to Modern Warfare 3, and The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. As Chris Morris writes, sales have rocketed up 15%, higher than the 3% analysts predicted, with sales of $1.6 billion (hardware sales are still down, though).
The L.A. Times had previously reported that gaming sales in October were up only 1%, which reporter Ben Fritz attributed to gamers playing online instead of buying new titles. (The 1% figure also didn’t include online sales and subscriptions.) But November was also predicted to be a big month for gaming, and sure enough, with the success of Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 3, and Elder Scrolls, things are improving dramatically.
As one analyst told LA Times writer Alex Pham, “This is the first time software sales have been up three months in a row since 2008. This kills two misperceptions about the industry. The first is that console games are dead. The second is that mobile and social games killed console games.”
