THE economic crisis may have hurt pockets, but the global video-gaming industry is still going strong.
In Singapore, sales of video games have been holding steady since the start of the year, despite the worsening financial downturn.
While there are no official figures, game distributors, publishers and stores my paper spoke to say that video games appear to be recession-resistant.
Industry insiders also note that the sales of games locally had been robust in past slowdowns, such as during the 2003 Sars crisis.
This tallies with media reports in January that said sales of video games in the United States rose a staggering 43 per cent from 2006 to reach US$17.9 billion last year.
This was despite last year's subprime crisis in the third quarter.
"Based on this history, we are confident our games won't suffer unduly," said Mr Yeo Yeok Chuan, vice-president of marketing and strategy at local distributor IAHGames.
Information-technology administrator Nigel Foo, 34, is one gamer who said he will continue to buy blockbuster games he fancies, "even if there's a crisis".
For instance, he forked out $65 this month for the latest Call Of Duty computer game.
A key factor why sales remain good here is because of video games' competitive pricing, compared to other forms of media entertainment.
Mr Alan Chou, regional marketing manager for South-east Asia at game publisher Microsoft, said that for the price of $60, a game "can provide hours of entertainment", compared to a one-time movie outing for a family of four.
Game-related events like Microsoft's X08 last month have also "boosted attention and demand" for gaming, said Mr Stanley Kee, commercial director at market-research firm GfK.
Gamescore owner Deli Low added that exhibiting at last weekend's Anime Festival Asia also helped to create "awareness of our games".
Still, local gaming sales have not experienced a great surge, unlike in the US, said Mr Kee.
This could be because many Singaporeans are buying online games over the Internet, said Mr Nicholas Aaron Khoo, co-founder of Singapore's Cybersports and Online Gaming Association.
Not all online sales of these games are recorded as part of local sales figures.
Moreover, Singaporeans also go for free games. Home-grown online game distributor Asiasoft Online said there are two million players from Singapore for its free online game, MapleSEA.
Mr Khoo said: "As the downturn gets worse, more people will play free online games."
