Adam Bruno

While it does in fact seem that the country is (slowly) pulling out of its economic recession (especially with November’s successful release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2), we’re apparently not out of the woods yet. In fact, we may be looking at another double-digit drop. That’s not a good thing, but 2009 is widely regarded as an absolutely abysmal year in video game sales, so it’s not surprise. Luckily, all is not lost.

“2009 appears to be an all-out miserable year for both hardware and software sales,” Wedbush’s Michael Pachter said in a note to investors. Signal Hill’s Todd Greenwald stated that a 10 percent drop in sales this month would be reasonable. And Modern Warfare 2 has effectively trounced the competition; every other title released in December with the possible exceptions of Assassin’s Creed 2 and Super Marios Bros. has woefully underperformed.

To make matters worse, Nintendo’s Wii sales have finally begun to drop significantly, despite the recent price cut. And it looks like the Wii Ware titles aren’t helping much as were previously expected. Despite the solid launch of the Wii Super Mario Bros., sales in general were disappointing throughout the year, and the influence of this title fell short of its goal of revitalizing Nintendo’s market.

Still, analysts remain optimistic about next year. Pacific Crest Securities’ Evan Wilson predicted that sales would start to grow again in March due to easier year-on-year comparisons and the strong lineup of Winter 2009 and Spring 2010 games. According to Pachter, there’s supposed to be an average of an 18 percent growth in game sales from March through October. Here’s hoping, because I don’t know if the video game industry can survive another year like 2009.

Source: Gamespot