Video Game Sales Decline in 2019

2019 marked a slight decline in profits for video game sales, with consumers being prompted to begin saving money for the upcoming Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. The anticipation of the 2020 console has lowered game sales by 12% throughout 2019, which applied to games without the critical success of brand recognition. Series like Pokemon and Call of Duty saw significant profits, with only three games from this year being new properties. This included Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, Spider-Man, and Anthem, with the later not earning the projected profits desired from Electric Arts. Video games under the Battlefield, Call of Duty and God of War brands, earned substantial benefits in a short period. This shows that the market is becoming similar to films, where brand recognition makes all the difference.

Biggest Selling Games of 2019

The highest-selling game this year, which we covered last week, was Call of Duty’s newest entry in the Modern Warfare series. It earned $600 million throughout its October Launch weekend, going onwards to make profits past $1 billion. It’s been a significant period since Call of Duty has surpassed this milestone, indicating that this entry in the series returns players to the classic games of old. The original Modern Warfare released in 2007, with its 4th sequel coming twelve years later.

Pokemon Sword & Shield, two games in the same series of games, earned more than $420,000.00 on its opening weekend in November. It’s expected that after the holiday season, that number will exceed $800,000.00. This marks the highest-selling iteration of Pokemon in existence, with total projected numbers after its lifetime sales to exceed past $1 billion. This would mark the first time that Pokemon surpassed the billion-dollar point. The Nintendo Switch sold 90,000.00 consoles worldwide before the week before Pokemon Sword and Shield release, which is up by 30% from previous weeks.

The New Consoles

The upcoming consoles from Sony and Microsoft are allowing for the Nintendo Switch to dominate hardware sales in 2019, with lifetime sales of this console exceeding the past 40 million units. Nintendo has created the fastest-selling video game console in existence, which Microsoft hopes to outpace with the Xbox Series X. PlayStation and Sony don’t anticipate that their upcoming console will sell more units faster than the Switch, indicating a more existence price tag. Regardless, 2020 will mark the most significant year in video game history.