Los Angeles Convention Center is full of liveliness and colour with the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Gaming giants will be showing off with their latest technologies and it will be a treat to every gamer attending the show.
Meanwhile, looking at ‘Behind the Scenes’, gaming industry has been in a very bad shape till this time. Though it won’t be reflected in E3, the truth lies there firm and untouched.
U.S. retail sales of video game content that includes portable, console and PC game software generated revenues of $9.3 billion. This denotes an 8% decline over the $10.1 billion generated in 2010.
Video game sales fell 42% in April, with the total industry sales falling to $630.4 million from $930.9 million, about a year ago. The early invasion of Easter is said to be the prevailing reason for the down in percentage sales.
Last year, Easter fell late in April causing most sales to fall in that month. It is found that Easter-related purchases generate an extra 10 percent in revenue in the month they occur, so some of the softness compared to last April could be attributed to the shift in Easter timing.
The top-selling game of the month was Activision Blizzard’s Prototype 2. LucasArts’s Kinect Star Wars and Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 were the next top selling games for April, at number two and three respectively.
For the gaming industry, growth is proceeding at a rapid rate, and it’s not hard to look past these figures and see an even brighter future as the industry moves toward the next generation. For that to happen, though, game companies will be pressed harder and harder to come up with new ideas, which could make for an uphill battle.
