New report claims that gaming is overtaking music
Many will argue that this has been coming for a few years now, but it is only in 2008 that computer games are beginning to outsell ‘combined music and video products’. In a year where the industry has been trying to figure out what to do with itself post-In Rainbows, the companies losing money may have even more reason to be concerned. The claims have come from a report conducted by Verdict Research. BBC News takes up the story:
It predicts spending on games will rise by 42% to £4.64bn in 2008, with sales on music and video at £4.46bn. In the last five years the video games market has more than doubled in value, while music sales have stagnated. The good news for game makers in the report was balanced by grim tidings for high street retailers.
“The music and video market is not just suffering from a slowing of growth but a massive transfer of spend to online,” says Malcolm Pinkerton of Verdict Research.
It is online sales of CDs and DVDs that have grown rapidly, rather than digital downloads, which still only account for around 4% of music and video sales. In contrast, video games spending has enjoyed explosive growth, with the launch of major new titles such as Grand Theft Auto IV and FIFA 08, and the Nintendo Wii continuing to broaden the appeal of games.
In addition to writing this blog, I have a part-time job at a very well-known high street store that sells CDs and games. The findings from this report certainly do not surprise me in anyway. The main reason as to why games sales are now so high is that there is a much wider demographic that has emerged, particurly with the Nintendo Wii and DS, which have been really big sellers so far (in terms of hardware AND software) and will continue to be in the Christmas period. In that context, it’s finally caught up with music at a time where CD sales have been declining for years.
It will be interesting to see what the difference in sales are between games and CDs after the year has passed. Whilst I’m not expecting it to be, I’m not going to be surprised if the gap between the two is sizeable.
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Posted on November 6th, 2008 by Max
Filed under: News
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