The pandemic bubble isn't done bursting | This Week in Business

gamesindustry.biz:

Brendan Sinclair

Managing Editor

Friday 17th June 2022

Last year, we wrote in this space about the uncomfortable reality of how much the games industry had benefitted from the pandemic, noting that the industry headed into COVID-19 with seven straight months of year-over-year declines in the NPD Group's US consumer spending report.

Then the pandemic was declared in March of 2020 and gaming rattled off (at the time of that column) 13 straight months of double-digit year-on-year growth.

That streak was snapped the next month as those year-over-year comparisons got a lot tougher once they were being made against pandemic shutdown months of the year before, but the industry continued to do well fairly well into the fall, mixing a few months of single-digit declines with some larger gains through October, when sales were up 16% year-over-year thanks to a strong slate of new releases.

That seems to have marked a turning point, as November was down and the industry hasn't been up again since.

STAT | 7 - The number of consecutive months of year-over-year declines in the NPD Group's US consumer spending on games, after this week's report of May sales down 19% year-over-year.

This isn't particularly surprising, as many publishers have told investors to expect a slowdown once pandemic restrictions were relaxed and people started returning to the habits and hobbies they were unable to pursue in lockdown.

Even then, they were optimistic that the industry would wind up in a stronger place than it had been before the pandemic, with companies like Take-Two predicting they would retain a significant chunk of the increased engagement from the pandemic.

That's held true so far for some companies -- EA reported record engagement for Apex Legends and