Video game consoles will bounce back – Here’s The Dring

What the report says

Hello! Happy Monday. Are you heading to Gamescom? If so, maybe I’ll see you there. Although looking at my schedule, maybe not!This week, we had the big GTA leak, and a couple of new studios opened. But the stories I’ve picked to dive into are around the worrying numbers around video game consoles.Plus, a brand-new story (with some exclusive quotes) about Clutch, the Maverick Games racer that Amazon dropped earlier this year.Enjoy!‘Here’s The Dring’ is our subscriber-only edition of The Game Business. If you’d like to support us, we currently have a 75% off Summer Sale running.

Not only do you receive this weekly newsletter and podcast, but we also produce a monthly market report and offer access to our events at no additional cost. Best of all? It also helps fund our main free Shows and newsletters on Tuesday and Thursday.Consoles suffer their worst month of US sales in six yearsIn Brief: US console hardware revenue fell to a low not seen since July 2020, when PS4, Xbox One and Switch were in short supply due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Higher console prices, driven by the rising cost of RAM and storage, has ‘significantly’ impacted the selling rates of PS5 and Xbox Series S and X, says data firm Circana.What You Need To Know:July US sales of games, hardware and accessories fell 10% to $4.5 billion compared to the year before, reports Circana.Mobile was the biggest reason for the decline, with console and PC content also dropping year-on-year.Nintendo Switch 2 will receive a $50 price rise in September, potentially making the situation for console sales worst.Data firm Ampere Analysis conducted a scenario analysis around what might happen if PlayStation 6 or Xbox’s Project Helix were to launch at $1,000.

Assuming the new consoles are incrementally improved over the previous generation, the combined number of PS6 and Helix consoles sold after the first five years could be up to 38% lower than the combined sales of PS5 and Xbox Series S and X during the same period.However, that isn’t a 38% total drop in console users, because there will be an increased number of players sticking with the previous generation.Here’s The Dring:The cinema has made quite the comeback (bear with me, this does relate to the topic).2026 is set to be the biggest year for theatrical movies since before the pandemic.

Key details

There are already five films that have exceeded $1 billion in Box Office revenue.But… hadn’t we all decided that Netflix and the streaming wars had killed the big screen? What’s caused the resurgence?The answer is incredibly boring… there were some popular films out. Inventive horror films, an ambitious sci-fi movie, a gothic romance and an adaptation of an epic poem. Interesting movies, ambitious movies, big franchise films and entirely new concepts. Stuff for kids, stuff for adults and everyone in-between.It turns out for all the deep analysis of Gen Z viewing habits, the way to get people back to the cinema was to give people a reason to go back to the cinema.