“Video game spending among 18-to-24-year-olds fell nearly 25% in a four-week April period.”
Young adults slashed gaming spending by 25% while older age groups held steady. The industry wants to blame economic pressure from student loans and a tight labor market, but the simpler explanation is that games cost too much, you can not resell digital copies, and there is a massive backlog of existing titles that never expires. When $70 gets you a game you can not trade in or sell, people start thinking twice. The gaming industry spent years killing the used game market and removing ownership rights. Now they are discovering that customers with no resale value in their library also have no urgency to buy new.