I think the game industry is following the music industry.
I heard digital sales could also be contracting but I don’t think it’s true. I think it’s going the same path music did that is, what and how people consume games is getting under the radar or more accurately, the radar is oversaturated: people play more and download, stream more games than ever. It became near impossible to track what’s going on.
Today, we have an insane amount of choice when it comes to games. From quirky free funny 5 minutes games to huge 100$ special edition productions where people play 75 hours on average, there’s something for everyone on every single support you can think of.
Exactly like music. You can totally love the last John Mayer and also enjoy an obscure artist on the rise. Charts don’t mean nothing today. The ocean is way too big.
So yeah, NPD is irrelevant like the top 40 for music was ten years ago.
The bad news is that it makes it difficult to predict a game’s success. Nothing can predict it, at all. Before we had some tools to push it in the good direction. Today marketing, budget, huge license, nothing can guarantee a game’s success. Activision, EA and Ubi are clueless and so are indie peeps (less, of course).
The good news is that it’s going to push game developers to disrupt to gain attention and sell. The bad news is that it’s going to make people copy and get rich with it. Like in music.