The market increasing or dropping has very little to do with the "real" ecconomy and has far more to do with how people are emotionally reacting to the news about the ecconomy ...
In general, sales are going to be down this Christmas but I don't think that will impact games as much as people suspect. You're (likely) going to see most people give slightly fewer gifts and they won't spend as much money on any single gift ... This makes me think that parents will be far less likely to give children TVs for their room or iPods and will focus on smaller gifts (like videogames for systems they own) instead; sales for game systems may remain fairly solid because they make good "family" gifts, and parents may buy the Wii, XBox 360 or PS3 rather than spend the $1,000+ they intended to spend on a TV or a vacation.
