This hasn't been an easy year for gaming. Not so much from a quality standpoint — games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Bloodborne are fantastic, and they're far from the only decent titles released this year. No, it's more about sales: with digital purchases on the rise, the retail side of gaming hasn't been doing all that well. Thankfully, it looks like that may be starting to change.
June was a huge month for gaming. E3 2015 kicked everything off, and the week-long show detailed much of what gamers could expect from the rest of the year and beyond. Then, Batman: Arkham Knight finally launched, and aside from its less-than-stellar PC port, the game has received almost universal acclaim.
Those two events may sound unrelated at first, but they have one thing in common: both helped push retail gaming sales for 2015 into their highest numbers yet.
E3 and Batman didn't inspire a small jump, either: the retail gaming market saw an 18 percent increase for the month of June compared to last year, according to the NPD (via CNET).
So, what happened? When it comes to hardware sales, it's likely that E3 2015 helped quite a bit. In previous years, games were still being produced for last-generation consoles, and many gamers were content with their older machines. E3 2015, however, focused primarily on next-gen only games — meaning that players have to upgrade in order to play. Games like Star Wars Battlefront and Halo 5: Guardians won't be available on older platforms — for many fans, that's a reason to finally upgrade.
Then, there's a little game called Batman: Arkham Knight. It was one of the most anticipated titles of 2015, and was the best selling title of the month (despite its absolutely atrocious PC port). Combine that with console releases like Lego Jurassic World and The Elder Scrolls Online, and June quickly became the industry's best month this year.
It should be noted that the NPD only tracks physical gaming sales from larger retailers like GameStop and Amazon — if you purchased your copy of Arkham Knight secondhand, it's obviously not going to show up here. Digital sales are also clearly a no-go, so anything purchased on the PlayStation Store, Steam or Xbox Live isn't going to show up either.
Even so, it's a good sign for the rest of the year. Typically, the summer months are some of the worst for gaming —but, if the industry can have a strong month in the middle of the year, chances are that the holiday season will be huge.
The two-year anniversary of the latest batch of consoles is coming up — from the looks of things, the next generation of gaming is finally coming into its own.
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