The Divnich Debrief: 2009 Has Just as Many High Quality Releases as 2008

Since modern day gaming is still in its infancy, it has never had the misfortune of enduring a deep recession, until now. With the brunt of the recession hitting us in 2009, and software sales being down nearly 14% year-to-date, many have wondered how much of the decline is due to this hidden economical force – or are there, perhaps, other factors at play? 

If this recession is taking its toll on our industry, and is the sole catalyst behind these declines, then we need rule out other factors that drive revenue in our industry.  

We are first going to look at two major factors that drive* industry sales, new releases and quality scores. The table below compares the quantity of releases and the average quality score for all games released in 2008 and 2009 for the first half of the year. For reference, we calculate our “EEDAR Quality” scores in a synonymous manner to other aggregate review sites.

As the table indicates, not only has 2009 had more releases, but quality scores overall have increased. However, if we just take the average of the top 20 games, we do see a small relative change in the opposite direction for quality scores compared to 2008; but to be fair the difference is negligible. This new statistic sheds light on a lot of commentary many industry professionals – including yours truly – have made about the lack of “blockbuster” releases in 2009, when in fact, in terms of quality, 2008 and 2009 have both had an equal amount of high quality releases. The first half of both years have had five titles surpass a score of 90 and both have had around 50 titles surpass 80. 

If release quantities and qualities are not the issue, maybe it is another software-driving factor, hardware sales. To date, we are down nearly 800,000 units compared to last year for next-generation hardware. If we assume that a consumer purchases two software units with each hardware purchase, at a $39 average per game, it would add $63 million into the software bucket, a small improvement from -14% to -11% year-to-date, but hardly a considerable difference.  

Since we have concluded that the three major software drivers* - release quantities, quality, and install base – are not materially affecting sales, then there must be some hidden force hindering sales. That force, could very well be the recession.  

Maybe our industry is not recession proof after all. Then again, which industry is? However, the recession theory is far from being concluded as two other factors, Marketing Spend, and Digital Distribution have not been factored in. In future articles, we will cover such topics.