Core gamers critical to industry during recession

Do you consider yourself a core gamer? Are you dirt poor but still set aside money to buy a video game? Will you spend more time in front of the TV to play games than watching CSI? If you said yes to any of these questions, then congratulations, you are helping to save the video game industry!

Video game industry analysts are saying that casual gamers come and go, but core gamers are here to stay, and will float the industry through the current economic crisis.

Do you consider yourself a core gamer? Are you dirt poor but still set aside money to buy a video game? Will you spend more time in front of the TV to play games than watching CSI?

If you said yes to any of these questions, then congratulations, you are helping to save the video game industry!

Video game industry analysts are saying that casual gamers come and go, but core gamers are here to stay, and will float the industry through the current economic crisis. “As long as hard-core gamers have a job, they will continue to buy games,” says IDC’s Billy Pidgeon.

And what is an analyst post without a word from Michael Pachter? So what does he have to say about all this? He concurs, estimating that core gamers buy roughly half of all video games. “They may be wealthy, they may be poor, but they have no clue we are in a recession,” he says. Stop using fancy words, Pachter. What’s a recession?

Retailers are also looking to core gamers to weather the industry’s current crisis. GameStop‘s chairman Richard Fontaine says “If the core gamers and the avid gamers are with us through these very unpredictable times, that’s a very, very good sign for us.” Anyone else worried for Nintendo?

• NPD: Hardcore gamers are big spenders, but casual gamers drive the industry
• Pachter: recession won’t affect video game industry much
• Atari: second hand game sales hurt industry, outlines plans to compensate
• GameStop: limiting second hand game sales hurts consumers

Via Associated Press