Even Wii isn’t immune to recession, says analyst
Nothing hides from the ugly face of recession, not even Wii and DS. Despite the platforms’ thundering success, their overwhelming advantage over the other platforms is not immune to economic turmoil. Find out why after the jump.
It’s thanks to the casual market that the Wii and DS are on top. But this threshold of buyers is more prone to a recession than the usual gamer market. Screen Digest‘s senior games analyst Piers Harding-Rolls explains why.
He points out that the games market is relatively less affected by recession. “The market is very much driven by its own hardware cycles, and that previous cycles have not been significantly impacted by recessions,” he said.
The core gamer demographic has always been males 18-35 years of age – people with time to play and money to spend. During a recession, this market would stock up on games and hibernate in their livingrooms instead of going out where they are likely to spend more.
Unfortunately for Nintendo, this is not their market. “The new mainstream consumers that play lifestyle and social games on the Wii and DS are more likely to be outside that core demographic and may be impacted more by a recession,” Harding-Rolls said. In fact, Nintendo’s casual-gaming market does not consider games to be top-priority purchases.
So even with all the success they’re having, there’s no guarantee that the Wii and DS will not experience any difficulty. Other consoles, like the PS3, continue to hurt as economic turmoil plagues the industry.
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Via Edge
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