In an article that I read, it said that recently more and more people (mainly American focused) are eating junk food because its cheaper than buying groceries and cooking it yourself.

But, when you take video games as an example, there are no cut backs.

However, that doesn’t mean we go trigger happy (pardon the pun) on giving our cash away. Yes, gamers are spending, but they are spending wisely. Because it’s no longer about just buying games and stacking them up – instead it’s about buying games that will have weeks worth of fun with.

In 2005, the top 20 titles accounted for 11% of games sold that year. In 2008, that rose to 18%. Similarly, compare 2008 Nintendo Wii’s game sales – where it’s top 10 titles account for 44% of the games sold for that console.

While this means that bigger companies like EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft Game Studios and so on will have a stable income, the smaller ones will eventually get bought out. Their games will be taken by the likes of EA, improved upon and then advertised in the market at a much higher spend than they could afford.

Case and example, Lionhead Studios (maker of Fable & Fable 2) got bought out by Microsoft in 2006. It’s an example of taking the first part of Fable, improving it – and then marketing it pretty well. May we will see bigger gaming companies swallow the smaller ones for creativity.

In the meantime, expect people to spend on games like Fallout 3, Fable 2, Grand Theft Auto, Guitar Hero and so on – because there is so much more to explore compared to buying Forza (I did 5 races and gave up!).