Are hardcore gamers on the decline?
Ars Technica has an article by Frank Caron that takes a look at 2006 game sales and the possiblity that the number of hardcore gamers is decreasing, noting surprising sales figures for licensed games like
Cars. From the article:
The demographic of the top 100 game sales by genre reveals expected numbers. Sports games and licensed games (e.g. titles based on licenses like Disney) were at the top of the list by a large margin, each with over 20 games of the top 100 of 2006. Action games and shooters followed with about 10 games each. Platformers, RPGs, racing games and others rounded out the bottom of the list. Likewise, publisher market share was hardly surprising, with EA taking the majority of the pie, followed by Nintendo, Take Two and Ubisoft. The report even documents release dates, which show an expected gravitation towards the holiday season.
As the report runs down the top 100 games by sales, though, things get a little more interesting. Despite the genre bar graph showing a high number of licensed game sales, I never really considered which titles were breaking the records. Surprisingly, Cars managed to take second place on the list of games sold. After Madden, Cars was the best-selling game of 2006. Though generally considered to be a triumphant waste of time and money, Cars demonstrates quite readily the power of a license in the place of competent gameplay. The game even managed to topple Lego Star Wars, which I would have expected to top the list, given its appeal to the hardcore and casual gamer alike. This surprised me.
Read the full article here...Source: Ars Technica