This increase is built on the backs of extensive game libraries for all three systems. By end of summer, there were already 400 games available for the three systems combined. And in the last four months of this year, another 400 will arrive. There literally is something for everyone in a mix that large. Meanwhile, for Game Boy Advance, the library for this single product will grow to 300 titles this year, and portable tie ratios are running at an all-time high of 3.5 to one. So, when you combine a rate of hardware penetration that’s nearly double the last cycle and a proportional rate of game sales that’s more than 20 percent higher, that huge leap in retail revenues makes a lot of sense. Will it continue? Well, for the foreseeable future, the answer is ‘”absolutely.” This holiday season is going to be, in a word, gangbusters.
This is the first time in industry history that three viable manufacturers have battled it out over any sustained period of time. As all of our marketing plans and release lists indicate, no one is backing down, and with a market almost double what it was just a couple of years ago, there’s no reason all three can’t prosper.
On a global basis, an outside research firm puts cumulative worldwide shipments of game consoles by year-end at almost 70 million units. Here in North America, we see total console shipments of 27 million at the end of our fiscal year in March, and that’s still less than half of the 60 - 70 million we project for this generation.
The technology is better than ever … the selection of software is wider than ever. And inarguably, the very nature of our entertainment experience is far better than it’s ever been before. Could we say that same thing right now about movies or music or TV? For our industry, right now we're in the middle of a pivotal holiday season and it’s full speed ahead. But beyond the dollars, I’d like to explore a couple of significant ways in which our business is changing and also look at where it remains the same as ever.
The axiom that we remain, like movies or music, a hit-driven business has never been truer. It’s no secret that just a handful of top sellers drive our business, while at the same time a significant number of game releases never make back their development investments. One focus of industry analysis relates to both the top 10 sellers and the top 30. Specifically of all units represented by the top 30, what percentage does just the top 10 represent?
