Sales of games has been pretty crumby of late.

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The Week in Review

Mr. Nash

March 11, 2006

Well, this week has been a delightful, low-key roller coaster ride. On the down side, we’re in a time when companies’ financial numbers start coming out, and the NPD is reporting year over year drops in game sales for February. However, on the happier side of life we did get a few nice game announcements, and it looks like a trio of designers are about to get knighted. However, this seems to be another week where gloominess just couldn’t be avoided. Maybe next week will be better...

Take-Two Posts a Not-So-Dazzling First Quarter:

One of the bigger bits of news to hit this week was that Take-Two posted a $29.1 million loss for its first fiscal quarter ending January 31, 2006. Granted, this past Christmas season, the publisher didn’t have a retail dynamo like GTA San Andreas to help them rake in the cash hand over fist; so one can cut them a little slack there. However, it is a tad disconcerting that the company is trying to place the blame for this on the quarter taking place during a transition period between generations of consoles. Sure the 360 launched then, but there was all of maybe two million of the things available globally, and most people who hadn’t pre-ordered were well aware that they wouldn’t be hopping on the next gen gaming for a while, and were just as happy with the current crop of games out there. For the majority of people, the next generation of gaming is at least another six months away from right now, let alone this past Christmas.

Game Sales Continue to Spiral Downward:

Continuing the recent trend of suffering sales at retail, the February NPD numbers came out showing that sales were down five percent over February 2005. Again, there’s a bunch of finger pointing that people are waiting for things like PS3 and the Revolution. Really, though, there wasn’t a hell of a lot to look forward to. EA brought out Black, and even that one has been getting a ho-hum response from a lot of people. Of course numbers are down, but if there wasn’t a whole lot to look forward to in February, and we’re coming out of an equally lackluster Christmas season, what do you expect? It should be no surprise that February kinda sucked.

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On the other hand, look at what’s due out this March. There are tons, and tons of high-profile games coming out (Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, Oblivion, Pokemon Trozei, Onimusha 4). If March turns out just as bad, then we have something to worry about.

De-listing for Atari?

Things just keep on getting worse for Atari. Earlier this week the company was warned that they will be de-listed

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from the NASDAQ stock exchange if they can’t keep their stock’s value over $1US for ten consecutive days. It’s just painful to watch this stuff. A good five years ago, when the company was still calling itself Infogrames, and wasn’t worrying about doing things like buying this brand, or pumping out uninspired crap (Indigo Prophecy not withstanding), these guys had consistently good games. I sure do miss the days of Driver, LeMans, Unreal Tournament, Test Drive, and V-Rally.

Sir Miyamoto?

Well, not quite, but it was pretty neat to hear that the French Ministry of Culture will be conferring knighthood on him, as well as Michel Ancel (Beyond Good & Evil), and Frederick Raynal (Alone in the Dark). The French have been surprisingly open to the idea of embracing games as art, unlike most other countries. It’s encouraging to see this continue with the knighting of several developers, and, better still, they are quite willing and able to award non-French designers as well as their own countrymen. Hopefully we’ll see this continue in the years to come. Bare in mind, though, that unlike a British knighting, a French knight does not get the title of "Sir".

Random Gaming Goodness:

It was nice to see Guild Wars Factions get a firm release date. We had a rough idea when it may be coming, but now we know it’ll be out in mid-April. It’ll be the first full-on retail expansion for the game, so fans have a lot of expectations in terms of content. I’ve enjoyed what the game has to offer thus far, though I reckon it may be time to create a new character.

Also, Microsoft announced that they were working on an expansion for Age of Empires III that will introduce a number of Native American factions to play as. I wonder what the campaigns will be like. Will they be about forcing the Europeans off the continent?