Diablo III can't save May game sales

still people buying COD???? cmon.

There are a multitude of reasons for it though largely due to the subscription based models out there today. 

With subscription based models, people are inclined to stick with an existing title rather than try new titles. Despite how lackluster the game can become, people just aren't willing to drop a sub monthly fee to go on and purchase another title in that same month. They'll just continue to look for fun things to do in their sub choice. 

Another reason is the emergence of the free to play MMO which I believe DLC doesn't count as a game sale. 

Another reason may be that the NA market for gaming hasn't grown much at all as anticipated. Younger kids have about the same odds of being a gamer today as they did 20 years ago which doesn't bode well for future growth. A kid who isn't relegated to the indoors has a social life and friends that will likely spend far less time indoors. 

This is what happens when game publishers developers are all consolidated under a few giant publishers.  When the development of games is being run by out of touch MBA's and equally out of touch focus groups, you get the garbage we've been peddled over the last couple of years.  There's literally nothing coming up over the next 6 months that I'm even remotely interested in buying.  

Well i can't help but feel I'm beeing ripped and tricked with every new game that comes out. I haven't bough a game in a long time, and I don't plan to, for the reasons stated by others before me. That doesn't mean I don't satify my game hunger, but I'm not buying anything until I've tried it first and play mostly old games from 99-2006.

Keep increasing prices, develop silly games with commercial apprehensions and ask "why sales are down?"

Do you know about the economic crysis in Europe also all over the world? I don't think so.

games are supposed to be about people having fun.. not other people getting rich off those people... which is ALL that matters to THOSE people... 

this info is spread to help us all realize .. more and more .. that the only thing that matters, is what matters to the people who pull the strings... and that what matters most to THOSE people ... is that the infinite growth paradigm, continues to drive humanity in the wrong direction.  and some day, when there is no more oil... then what?  what games will there be?  probably the kind where we everyone goes out onto a field out under the sun, next to another field of solar arrays and plays for... oh my gosh... FUN and not money.

ahhh JibbaJabBa

No big deal. It's exactly what you'd expect as developers get ready for the next gen of consoles.

I spend my time playing more Indie games nowadays. The big players in the gaming industry over the last 5 years have definitely lost their way dumbing and stripping down games to try and aim for a more casual player with simplistic design and colourful user inferfaces to appease the less mentally challenged.

Diablo 3 is OK but like people said here, it becomes boring and repetitive in it's linearity and lack of randomness.

What are you suggesting? That making new games has an impact on game sales?

Next thing you're going to suggest is that quality has something to do with it too.

Lunacy.

I Love the monthly business reports that are done, interestingly enough would you say these are done for the benefit of us as consumers or for the developers?  If the latter happens to be true wouldn't that effectively eliminate the staff of this website to do reviews objectively?  Thoughts anyone?  

Also a thanks goes out on my behalf to all the consumers that are the cause of this latest slump, people who refuse to be nickel and dimed to death by DLC, and not supporting game designers who are actively putting out sub par products, i.e. Capcom, EA/Bioware, and also supporting the games that should be supported.  Keep up the good work and maybe some of these companies will start putting out complete products for you to purchase.

Sooo should i feel sad that an already incredible successful game isn't going to make as many millions and high unit marks as it did the month before after breaking the record for you know what???? 

Seriously, what's going to happen, they've already cashed out big time, broke some selling  record, and are pretty much set for life. Should i cry that they aren't gonna make much money as the month before??? I know this post was made for  certain reasons and there wasn't really any other tone this article could've gone; but seriously, who in the world of gaming gives a damn?

well everythings been stripped down, noobified, broken, drm's nonsense, bad writing, worse storylines, etc etc.

you cant mass produce art.   I miss the days when there were lots of smaller companies around.  I used to pickup new titles all the time.  Now i browse the $5 bin every so often, and even then i dont end up playing through half my games anymore.

i for one could not find diablo 3 for sale in any shops and i refuse to pay the same price for a digital copy as a retail one so waited till hune to get it. The sales will probably not go up till xmas at the earliest as people are fed up of playing fps. We need more quality platformers (like the ps1 days) and strategy games for consoles. Although i love my 360 we also need a better selection of games every other game is either a fps or a kinect title and although i do own kinect i do not want to jump up and down waving my arms everyday.

I miss Freespace and Homeworld series. It's not really that hard to play those games. Is the new gaming community not breast feed when they were babies and are now too dumb to comprehend those games?

IMO, the FPS genre is too rehashed and barren. They need to stop developing FPS games and make a game that would give new experience to the current gamers. Probably like the crop rotation practice in agriculture.

And Diablo 3 is just decent, nothing spectacular...The game has less content than Diablo 2, gets boring pretty fast, is unbalanced, have terribad drm and still lacks pvp

another nail in the coffin of console gaming

For me, Dragon's Dogma has been the best game from May and maybe one of the best games of this year so far.

It's a refreshing game that is a nice change of pace from the usual shooters. 

 @RoadStar1602  That's a horrible metaphor, comparing a product that costs 15k and upwards with a $60 product. I'm not gonna rehash the reasons they made D3 always online, but you can find it if you take a cursory look over the internet.

Despite this, I agree with @NeilCardiff that games have been on a steady decline for years now. The removal of features and the need to make games as generic as possible, and thus, accessible to all is ruining gaming. This trend is similar to Hollywood, where the general quality of blockbusters decreases as they try to squeeze every dollar out of the product. The companies find out the bare minimum amount of features and content that captures the largest population and they then make it. This is why we have Call of Duty 6000. People buy it, despite it now being an old rehash.

When the industry was in its fledgling stage, games were catering to a niche within a niche. You had Railroad tycoon, tile strategy games, innovations like Starcraft and Diablo, Rainbow Six. This is just to name a few. Let's look at these games today.

RRtycoon - games of this ilk are essentially gone. The last RR came out in 2003. The reason is that these games are niche and they won't earn as many dollars going up against games for the lowest common denominator. On that point, they are too complicated for the avg joe to pick up and play.This complexity is now anathema to the games industry and it is a shame. If they did come out with RR today, you can bet it would be so simplified that a child could figure it out. This trend goes for all of these simulation style games. Fingers crossed for Sim City 5.

Tile strategy - No flashy graphics = useless. While there are some studios still putting these games out, they are very hard to find and really don't get enough recognition from the media.

Starcraft - This is actually a well done game. Blizzard succeeded here in making a game that's easy to learn and impossible to master.

Diablo 3 - They essentially threw their pre WoW fans under the bus making D3 into something akin to a single/co-op version of WoW. It's been gone over in detail but the main point is that features from the old game were cut to make it more average WoW player friendly. While this brings in more customers, it alienates the fans who played the first two games.

Rainbow Six - The original was amazing. A tactical shooter where you had to think when executing your hostage rescue missions. These games required planning. Before each mission you had to sit down with a map and plan out the routes for all your teams in great detail. I guess they thought that was too tough for today's gamer as they basically made the game into a CoD clone action shooter.

The industry has basically shifted towards a homogenization of content. There used to be a perception that game studios worked with passion. Now, they are simply machines churning out the next re skinned clone of what sells. Key takeaway here is that just because something sells well, it doesn't mean that it's good. There are a lot of stupid people out there.

Have EA knock it off with ruining great IP's, milking mediocre ones and reviving old ones in ways that no one ever wanted EVER, and have the whole industry in general knock it off with bulls**t DLC practices, and I'll start buying more games.

I have to blame some of this problem on corporate fanboys who have been attacking anyone who speaks out against developers and distributors for as long as I can remember (maybe many years ago when gaming was a much smaller industry with much smaller sales and companies actually cared about the games they produced they might have had a poin).

Unfortunately it appears that far too many of these fanboys have been employed by corporations as gaming journalists, so now the execs of the gaming industry see articles that call us entitled and decide that we are just spoiled whiners that deserve no respect.

They will blindly and arrogantly keep producing ever more generic games and adding ever more gouging until hell freezes over, they are too out of touch and filled with their own self importance to see the real problems and just keep blaming their failures on piracy and second-hand sales.

People are starting to wise up to anti-gamer policies like DRM and overpriced games. There's no mystery here. I'm glad it's happening.

Look at Diablo III itself. Imagine if you bought a car and found out it had to be perpetually connected to GM's server in order to drive it. Then you got it home and GM's server didn't even work for the first 24 hours, and every Tuesday morning GM's server was down for maintenance for and indefinite period of time so you can't drive the car. On top of that, the GM server frequently lagged while you were driving, causing the car to suddenly stop and back up 10 yards on its own. Sometimes in the middle of driving, you would get disconnected from the server and car would just shut off in the middle of the freeway. That's what gamers who paid $60 for Diablo III are subjected to. People would not accept this sort of nonsense in any other product they purchase, but for some reason, they put up with it in the gaming. 

I say wait for PVP to be added then will see how it will save D3

... and we need to stop looking back at old times... where the games are great and memorable... gaming industry is now big business no wonder they milking more money from us... we just need to be selective that's all. 

StarCraft II was a lot of fun, but I really miss Real Time Strategy games, like Supreme Commander, Age of Empires or Empire Earth.

As many have stated before me, IMO the anti-consumer and profiteering practices of DRM and DLC are slowly dismantling the loyal base of gamers. At this point, I almost consider myself an "Indie" gamer (I know it's a bit ***), because that is where I see true innovation and quality. Super Meatboy, Machinarium, Cave Story, Bastion, Braid, Trine, World of Goo, etc.... I find those games to be amazing and worth the effort. Mostly on short side, but I paid no more than $5 for any of them with Steam sales, and find myself revisiting them for the experience and not the gameplay per se. Remember that guys?!?! When gaming was an experience and not just an endless series of revamped maps and punch lines...   

a new genre is needed.. move over FPS,RPG,MMO,etc

Wish an epic RPG series like Baldurs Gate/ Champions of Norath was formed.. Diablo 3 was a bore in my personal eyes, played it for a couple of hours.. Diablo 2 was my favourite game years back.. Gaming certainly looks bleak in all honesty.. Im a vivid Fifa, BF fan.. but its just the same old stuff spewed out, I miss days when I actually looked forward to a game coming out like a Child on Christmas eve

i have lost alot of faith in the mainstream gaming industry, it has gotten to get more profit then making a game that is fun to play. My favorite game in a long time is binding of isaac and is really cheap and all those free to play games has even more value then those 60$ games. Diablo 3 is one of the shortest lived rpg games i have played and i dont see anything fun playing the same story again and again to get the same item with a different name. Or play a fps playing a 2 hour story and multiplayer with the same repatative maps and slightly differnet weapon choices again and again.