The entire gaming market slumped 12% in the US last year

I hate to be the ringer of bad news, but the entire gaming market - both consoles, and PC - dropped 12% in the United States in 2016 compared to 2015's numbers.

The latest report from NPD Group said that PC software sales increasing by 5% in 2016 - compared to the 13% drop in 2015 - while console and portable software dropped 6%, hardware dropping by a larger 24% chunk, and accessories with a 6% drop. Overall, the gaming industry in the US dropped 12% to $12.1 billion.

Do you think the release of the Xbox Scorpio and Nintendo Switch will help console hardware, software, and peripherals sales this year? What about the next-gen Ryzen CPU from AMD, RTG's upcoming Vega GPU, NVIDIA's new graphics cards - and hopefully a tease of Volta at GTC in May? And, what games are looking to be big sales - because 2016 was filled with massive AAA titles, but 2017 isn't looking as lucrative to game publishers in terms of large sequels.

Maybe game developers are learning their lessons, eh?

Last updated: Apr 6, 2020 at 04:47 pm CDT