Every Monday (even though today is Tuesday) the LeftStickRight team will take on a different topic surrounding news or interesting topics about games or the gaming industry and open it up for discussion. Our three editors will give their perspective and you are welcome to give your own. Agree? Disagree?

The topic this week is: With video game sales dropping early this year, have they reached reached their apex already in terms of hitting the mass market? Have game sales reached their peak?

Ian Y’s Take

Sure, video game sales have been less than stellar as of late. But, as is the hip thing to do nowadays, I blame the economy. Sales haven’t peaked, in theory there’s a lot of room for growth. We in the gaming community sometimes forget just how small the game industry is compared to other media/entertainment outlets. It’s easy to find people who never play video games but I can guarantee that those same people watch TV at home, see movies in the theater or listen to music on the radio or a MP3 player.

Games simply haven’t yet reached the level of ubiquity that other forms of entertainment have and there’s no reason to expect them to. Consider this: games are competing against forms of media, like TV, that have at least a half a century head start. And, if anthropologists are correct, music has been around for as long as human culture itself.

But if industry intentions and demographic trends are any indication, video games are slowly but surely marching towards consumer critical mass. So long as developers keep making games to appeal to larger audiences, the marketing get larger and the community is able to shed its geek/shut-in stereotypes, in the long term, sales have no where to go but up.

Tim’s Take

With the holdover of many games past last holiday season, I thought the beginning of the year would be a pretty ripe time for sales. Now that they’ve shown to have dropped off (with the potential exception of Mass Effect 2), it does seem difficult that sales through the rest of the year will crest again — with Holiday 2010 the only reasonable contender unless a Modern Warfare 3 causes many companies to soil themselves again.

Don’t make it a sure bet just yet, though. Being the Nintendo-centric guy, I have to speak of the company’s propensity for dropping massive titles whenever they very well please. Mario Galaxy 2 seems likely to come out this year and has the potential to be pretty big, and if that’s combined with a Zelda release in 2010, you’ll have numbers out the wazoo. Also – and yes, I’m serious – don’t count out what the potential Wii Vitality Sensor release might do among the casual market.

And let’s not count out any Halos and surprises companies may have up their sleeves. With the proper timing, a big Nintendo drop surrounded by some AAA titles could create a period just as good or better than we’ve seen so far.

Ian H’s Take

I do not believe that video game sales have reached their highest numbers, but I am wondering if they are finally reaching market saturation in certain areas. At least with this generation, there is a downward trend for the previously number one console and an upward trend for the worst. December 2009 turned out to be the best month ever, but January 2010 saw weak sales even compared to an already weak 2009 showing. I’m not sure anyone believes that everyone in the world will become a consumer for games, and I do imagine there are still people that can be reached given the right product, but eventually the people who are accustomed to the standard retail game thoroughfare will be reached to a point where the increments will be based on market sizes increasing and not better penetration of existing markets.

Basically, I think that the store shelves will still see a steady increase, as the entertainment medium still continues to mature, but I think the big leap this generation into the homes of a wider install base will not necessarily be repeated any time soon. Nintendo is reeling from lower sales (still the best in the industry) and it doesn’t seem like there is any move to start reaching the system out to any wider of an audience. I think the big growth will continue to be in the mobile sector, as well as the free-to-play online sector which is still growing exponentially across the worlds and makes significant income for companies in Asian markets. Those markets have yet to experience their full potential, and if there is anywhere in the gaming industry that is going to blossom the most over the next year or so it will be there. Micro-transactions have just begun in North America and do not expect them to stop any time soon.