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Game sales plummet
No one wants them
US video game industry sales plunged faster than a performing team of free fall parachutists of elephants who have forgotten to pack a key ingredient to their act.
NPD Group said that sales in October, dropping 19 percent from a year earlier, and 16.4 percent from September. The beancounters think that the record-breaking performance of Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and the coming holiday season, means the industry's fortunes for November will be a little better.
The industry only made a pathetic $1.07 billion in October compared with $1.32 billion in October 2008 and $1.28 billion in September 2009. NPD analyst Anita Frazier said that while sales were down precipitously in October, it was still the third-best October sales report turned in by the video game industry. She said that the continued economic turmoil, and in particular the troubling unemployment rate, is undoubtedly impacting industry sales.
Although consumers' general opinion about the economy is improving, their outlook on their own personal situation is worsening. If consumers' personal outlook continues to erode, they could very well be much more conservative with their holiday shopping this year, she wrote.
Nintendo, which has seen sales of its once-high-flying Wii dip and perceptions that the console's glory days may be over, the numbers were a spot of good news. In October, the Wii took back first place among the consoles--respectively the Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360, and Sony's PlayStation 3. In October, Nintendo moved 506,900 Wiis, beating out the PS3 (320,600) and the Xbox (249,700).