VideoGameAccountant said:
Most likely, this recession will be worse than 2008. The problems of 2008 weren't solved and with COVID, there is way too much money in the system. This, coupled with the fact a lot of the world is de-dollarizing, means more inflation in the US, higher rates, and less growth. A decline in the US would result in a decline every, and Europe is going to get hard due to high energy prices. There are also more assests that are overvalued than 2008, one of the most notable being cars. That's the asset I'd watch. There are a lot of structural problems for the PS5 (issues getting consoles to market, a lot of scalpers buying up consoles, third parties not wanting to fully commit, Sony included). A bad recession could be a tipping point and really hurt momentum. The system did very well in Holiday 2022 thanks to GoW and better availability, but when push comes to shove, and with not a lot of compelling titles coming out, consumers may just stick with their PS4. Aside, but a recession will hurt Nintendo and Microsoft as well, but in different ways (and Microsoft may be the one better off). |
Not so sure about that. Maybe, but 2008 wasn't anticipated by most and was quite abrupt, where as things have been weakening for some time now and many have been keeping an eye on it for some time. That's not to say there won't be a crash and it won't be bad, but we're far more aware of the situation this time around so we can much better maneuver. How much that softens the blow is hard to say. There was a general narrative that we were going to see another crash around 2020, but with covid, we may have potentially avoided a hard crash, and instead are riding it out slowly over years. Though it's also possible we've been maneuvering around it for years now and it's going to hit at some point no matter what.
If we do get a crash as I said, then sales will slow a bit. Yet people will still want something to do and gaming is cheap and can be repetitive in a good way, and even cheaper for PS5 come this fall hopefully, so I don't see sales hurting too much even with a crash. Unless the crash is somehow terribly devastating across the board, which at that point all products and markets are in massive trouble.
I'd say right now it looks more like a long slow drawn out recession. That's something that will hold back PS5 sales a bit, but won't cause them to falter much for the next couple years.