John is going to give me some guff for the title but according to this
article from
Reuters, video game sales are down 20% from last year. They do
expect sales to pick up this month and next month with the impending
release of the Xbox 360. In a way this makes a lot of sense as we
really haven't had the major, "gotta have it" uber-game this year (last
year we had Halo 2, Doom 3, Half-Life 2 all around the same time) and
there's the issue of people holding off on buying things in
anticipation for the release of next generation consoles (which they
site in the article). It's going to be interesting to see how
well the Xbox 360 does as there are already rumors of shortages (good
luck trying to pre-order one). Hopefully we are not on the cusp
of the video game recession that has already struck Japan.
