Video Games Benefit From The Credit Crunch

Financial worries are forcing us all to tighten our belts, and encouraging a sort of “make do and mend” culture across the country. Sales of sewing machines are on the up, says Argos, as people take to customising their own clothes rather than splashing out on new threads; bread-making machines, too, are enjoying a surge in popularity, says Comet, with people opting to bake their own loaves to save dough. Despite these straitened times, the video-games industry is enjoying record sales, even as spending on other entertainment declines. According to the latest figures, more video games were bought last year than DVDs. Sales were up 20 per cent, raking in $32 billion (£22 billion), while sales of films on DVD and Blu-ray, by contrast, dropped by 6 per cent, earning just $29 billion worldwide. It seems that consumers are quickly warming to the idea of video games not only as a good-value form of entertainment, but as something that can be enjoyed by all ages and abilities, together, as a social activity.

Consoles such as the Nintendo Wii, with its clever motion-sensitive controllers, and games such as Rock Star and Guitar Hero, are proving hugely attractive to consumers who may never previously have considered giving gaming a go. Video-games parties are all the rage. Guests are invited to bring a dish and a bottle of wine and the evening is spent in a convivial if competitive atmosphere as people duel against one another on SingStar, a karaoke game, or Guitar Hero, where players must strum a plastic guitar plugged into the games console in time with the on-screen instructions. “Consumers are staying in and spending more money on being entertained at home,” says Aaron Greenberg, head of interactive entertainment product management at Microsoft, which makes the Xbox 360 games console. “The credit crunch is a fact for folks in the US and Europe, so people are being much more cautious.” And it’s women who are largely driving the video-games market, buying 21 per cent more games last year than they did in 2007, according to researchers at TNS. “The Nintendo DS and the Wii have bought a demographic into the market that is not normally associated with gaming,” says Chris Barnes, an account manager with TNS.

“The birth of casual gaming has made gaming more widely acceptable, and console and games publishers are falling over themselves to produce products that don’t target the traditional gamer. Wii Fit and Guitar Hero have proven to be a massive success.” The price of consoles – with a Nintendo Wii costing as little as £179, and an Xbox 360 even less – is seen as crucial to redefining video gaming as an entertainment proposition with mass appeal. Add to that the almost endless replay value of many games, as well as the inherent fun factor of competing with friends and family in singing contests and virtual tennis, and it’s easy to see why video gaming is the perfect antidote to the credit crunch. The nation’s new-found passion is having a positive knock-on effect in other areas. There are numerous studies showing that the rapid-fire imagery in video games is helping us to process everyday images and information with increasing speed and accuracy, and in some cases improves hand-to-eye co-ordination to such an extent that trainee surgeons are using video games to hone their fine motor skills. “Our environment, because of technology, is changing, and therefore the abilities we need in order to navigate these highly information-laden environments are changing,” says Susana Urbina, a professor of psychology at the University of North Florida.

Moreover, rhythm-action video games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero are encouraging children to pick up musical instruments. About 2.5 million British youngsters have progressed to real music-making after playing console games, according to Youth Music, the UK’s largest music charity. And it’s not just the video-games industry that’s enjoying a boom. Sales of “netbooks” – cheap, ultra-portable laptops that have minimal memory and storage, but are small enough to carry everywhere and capable of connecting to the web – are on the up. Netbooks, such as the Asus Eee PC and Acer Aspire One, now account for 10 per cent of all computers sold in Europe, say analysts at IDC. Many netbooks – some costing less than £200 – also bring a new kind of operating system to consumers. Lots of them run a version of the open-source Linux platform, a competitor to Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s OS X, which is easy to use and economical to run. It seems that is carrying over into people’s regular computer usage too, with consumers seemingly more willing to try out free software, such as Open Office and Google Docs, which are alternatives to Microsoft Office. These programs not only reduce costs, but in many cases are more useful, because documents are stored on the internet rather than on a single-computer hard drive, so they can be accessed from any machine. Tech-savvy Britons are also livening up the long, cash-strapped winter nights by turning to catch-up TV services on the web. It is, after all, much cheaper to watch the first series of Little Dorrit for free on the BBC’s iPlayer service than splash out on cinema tickets. Traffic to the iPlayer service has surged in recent months, with more than 41 million TV show requests from iPlayer last December alone. Channel 4 offers a similar service with 4OD, as does ITV, while Sky’s Sky Player provides access to its recently screened films and television shows. ( www.telegraph.co.uk )

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