And it's actually fun until you realize actual politicians might run the actual country in the same care-free trial and error based way you're running a virtual election. =P

So even the mighty game industry will be effected. We have yet to see the effects, but lets look ahead and see how everything pans out.

Oh yeah thats true as well. TV's, Camera's all at the top end.

PS3 price cut chances = 0% now unless some miracle in the economy takes place....sadly such miracles never happen.

Man wtf lol. I dont know much about all this stuff but what is going on i know its somehting about credit but i dont get it =/

I think we have seen the effects in Japan. The console market shrunk significantly in the past year. I can see the same thing happening perhaps to a lesser degree, but it could happen.

Europe which seemed to be a growing market is the next card to fall. The super strong European economy is starting to grow some huge cracks.

Bad economy means higher Wii sales and lower PS3 and X360 sales

Wouldn't the cheapest console (the Xbox 360) sell the most?  It's cheapest world wide now.

Does anyone know why Charter communications is still listed on the NASDAQ?  It doesn't fulfill the 'continued listing requirements.'

[edit]

Ah, I see -- the continued listing hammer comes down after 30 days under $1 and then you get a period (possibly 180 days) before which you have to regain complaince before you are delisted.  Charter will likely go bankrupt before they get delisted, in that case.

De-regulation is as much at fault here as the dishonest people.

The money and credit crunch I blame partly on job exporting creating lower numbers of middle class and more people needing credit just to make due. 159,000 jobs in America lost in September, where did they go? Care to take a guess the answer is China or India? The republican government as of now has done absolutely nothing to protect American jobs and in fact has shown it even likes to pay it's troops less by attempting to cut their supply, benefits and pay. (We have had democratic congress and senate for 2 years but Bush has also effectively vetoed much of what he didn't want)

It should also be stressed not everybody was trying to take advantage of the system. In the wake of nobody watching them they wrote in many things Balloon payments, raising interest rates to insane degrees after a certain point of time. This is as much, if not more, the banks faults then the people defaulting. Lending 9 dollars for every 1 you have is pure insanity there IS a breaking point and these guys should have known it.

 It shoudn't impact most of the major games we buy.

I could be wrong but I don't think the major publishers ( Activision, EA, THQ, Take Two, Ubisoft ) actually resort to credit much to finance their project .

Activision has no debt, neither does Take Two. If credit was used to finance projects at those company you would expect them to have some debts..

Further, games development will not be significantly impacted by short term market movement, even if they are extreme movement.  If the market is in bad shape for over a year game devs may take fewer risks on new development, but for the industry to make even a 50% change, it would take more than a year of bad market. 

Even in that case, you'd expect more of the shovelware to die down than the quality and good selling games.  Things that sell well will continue to be produced.

You also need to realize that games are very inexpensive.  An average gamer probably spends $1000 or less on gaming a year -- very low compared to an average middle-class entertainment budget.  That's only a couple of tickets to football games, for example, one semi-decent dinner a month for a couple. 

Video games aren't cars -- they're cheap.