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Business News Digital
Music videogame sales down
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 14 January 2009
How about some doom and gloom, now? There’s more research from the US that suggests music videogames in 2008 were down on 2007 and that the whole genre of pretend-to-play may have peaked.
This is bad news for all those in the industry who were hoping that the licensing of music in these games would, at least in part, cover some of the losses from flagging record sales.
Although the genre remains the most popular type of videogame currently, sales were reportedly down between 6-12% in 2008.
The releases of ‘Guitar Hero: World Tour’ and ‘Rock Band 2’ were surrounded by much hype and while the former has shifted an impressive 1.5 million units in the US, this is actually down 55% on sales of the previous version, ‘Guitar Hero III’. ‘Rock Band 2’, meanwhile, has sold 809,000 copies in the States.
Competitors to those kings of music games, Disney’s ‘Ultimate Band’, Konami’s ‘Rock Revolution’ and Nintendo’s really quite awful-looking ‘Wii Music’ fared even worse, suffering really rather poor sales, according to Variety.
Analyst at Electronic Entertainment Design And Research, Jesse Divnich, wrote recently: “I do believe the music and rhythm category is definitely here to stay, and it will always have a large and loyal market base. I believe, however, we may have seen a peak in sales from the category”.
However, on a more upbeat note, some within the industry are saying that sales of tracks through games such as these are becoming a significant revenue stream and continue to grow.
So, even if sales of the actual games levels off, the growth of in-game track sales could indeed become the money spinner many are hoping for. And with a Metallica edition of ‘Guitar Hero’ and Beatles edition of ‘Rock Band’ due for release this year, it remains to be seen how this story will turn out – with such big artists involved 2009 sales could be up on 2008.
