The European economy is doing pretty poorly as well. I only occasionally dabble in the news, but I hear that Spain will soon have a recession, and they're having amazing hardware sales as of recent. And besides, the American gaming market is far larger than it was last generation when the economy was in good shape, so I don't think the reasons for the European hardware market becoming larger are as simple as that. I believe it boils down to the population difference. The U.S., with a population of 300 million, accounts for 90% of the Americas market. So even though the combined population of North and South America is about 900 million, most of the population isn't buying games. Europe has an older population (which means more working wages and more games being bought) and a far larger population with more equal wealth distribution across the union.
