I assume economists count students as unemployed as they do every individual or group who is not paying taxes.
As for Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, high unemployment rates will affect how many games are sold.
I remember in the mid and late 1990s where it was common for the top 5 music albums in the US to sell upwards to 3 to 10 million in the first year. Nowadays, most artists are lucky to sell a million to reach platinum status.
Henceforth, the question becomes is it a matter of quality or quantity?
Sony and every other video game maker would love to have both quality and quantity. However, when the individual consumer has less disposable income to spend, then their driving motivator for purchase becomes quality. Gamers like myself do not even look at games when we can't see spending 100 hours playing them whether it is a party game or a game such as Dragon Age: Origins.
In hard economic times, Sony would benefit immensely from not trying to top Nintendo and Microsoft in quantity and focus on quality games for Move and the "core" crowd. Focusing on quantity is chasing the ghost consumer, which in my opinion and leads to higher costs, ruined game developer careers, and smaller by percentage returns on investment.
