The US economy is down. The housing market is down. But there is one thing that has shot up in spite of sluggish economic conditions — video games. GameStop Corp. has a lot to be happy about because its fourth-quarter net income rose 46%.
The surge in strong video game sales is attributed to all the top games that have come out for gaming platforms across the board. To put this into dollars and cents GameStop made $189.8 million in net income compared to only $129.8 million from last year.
The increase in video game sales activity seems to go against the tide as far as money being tight. In addition to this the video game industry has gone under the gun and received intense fire from politicians and children’s rights organizations that continue to try to pass and enforce laws that "protect" the public from so-called offensive game content.
So how is it possible that video games continue to increase in popularity in spite of these negative conditions? The answer is not very hard to determine. People like to be entertained and video games have evolved to such an extent that the high entertainment value is drawing more and more people into the gaming world–and this includes many new gamers that have entered the fold through casual gaming.
As long as the video game industry understands that superior content and fun draws customers, it should be continuing this upward trend for a while. Of course they could get lazy and start to crank out substandard sequel after sequel, (are you listening EA?) but hopefully game companies will get the message that quality means profits.
[via wallstreetjournal]
