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In a recent interview, THQ CEO Brian Farrell disputed the growing concern that the gaming industry isn’t healthy. This belief in a dying game market has been sparked by declining gaming sales over the course of the last few years, as tracked by NPD. “I’m a big fan of NPD and we’re not declaring war on them,” Farrell assured, “but what we’ve been trying to clarify is people are looking at just NPD now, right?…I’m not being critical of [NPD], but it’s just a lot of investors or people who look at the industry and see the NPD box product sales are down…more people are playing games than ever before.”  [We] as an industry need to come up with a different way to look at the industry to capture all those revenue streams,” he continued. “So I think the industry is a lot healthier than just what NPD is reporting.” NPD is one of the main sources of tracking gaming sales, but the group has mainly focused on sales of physical software, hardware, and accessories. Much of the gaming revenue has shifted to digital downloads, used game purchases, and game rentals. NPD has reported that they intend to shift their focus to track a wider range of revenue. |