Nintendo of America: "Nintendo Switch achieves its best sales week ever in the U.S."

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Shadow1980 said:

numberwang said:

Trump economy.

The fortunes of the video games market are, as far as anyone can tell, not dependent on the state of the economy, be it boom or bust. Sales continued to rise during the last recession, which took place early last generation, contrary to what one would think given how many people fell on hard times. Similarly, we had another smaller recession in 2001, again early on in a console generation, yet the console market experienced significant sales growth. The console cycle of grow-peak-decline-repeat seems to just go on its own pace, almost as if people continue to spend on entertainment even in tough economic times (movies likewise seem to be recession-proof). Granted, we haven't seen anything nearly as severe as the Great Depression in 90 years, so we don't know how recession-proof games really are, but so far, the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, and Trump economies have meant precisely diddly squat when it comes to consumer spending on video games.

I am going to somewhat disagree with this.  During a recession people eat less steak and more macaroni and cheese.  They shop at Walmart more and other more expensive stores less.  People choose cheaper substitutes during a recession.

In 2008, the stock market crashed.  The Wii continued to dominate throughout 2008-2009 while PS3 and XBox360 sales were sluggish.  At the same time the cheaper DS was also dominating the PSP.  In both cases people were choosing the cheaper substitutes.  So, it does not appear that the recession caused anyone to leave the gaming market, quite the opposite in fact.  However, the recession did correlate with the success of cheaper substitutes.