No threat to game sales from Connecticut shooting, says analyst
Cowan & Company analyst Doug Creutz is convinced that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting incident will have little to no impact on the sales of video games, even the ones depicting violence.
He assured the worried investors that video games will continue to sell well in the market irrespective of a new legislation, which seems highly likely with West Virginia Democrat senator Jay Rockefeller introducing a bill in the Congress for investigation
of effects of violent games on children and their well-being.
Creutz also stated that the consumer backlash in the wake of tragic Connecticut shooting would be minor at most and will therefore not result in significant losses at all.
“We have received many questions from investors about the potential impact of the recent tragedy in Newtown on our covered universe of video game publisher stocks,” Creutz said. “While this is a difficult issue to address due to the intense emotions surrounding
the incident, we have attempted to present a summary of the relevant facts herein.”
The Cowan & Company analyst noted that the Supreme Court’s ruling last week, which deemed sales of violent games to children is in direct violation of the First Amendment, has laid down a solid ground for any attempts to regulate sales of video game to be
struck down immediately.
Addressing the bill introduced by Rockefeller in Congress, Creutz contended that majority of the adults have already established an opinion about the effect of video game violence and real world violence and these opinions will not change that easily.
The bill introduced in Congress would task the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to carry out a comprehensive study and investigation of the effects of violence in video games and other programming and their effects on the minds and well-being of children.
Creutz claimed that retailer checks with Amazon has revealed that first-person shooters such as Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Halo 4 are continuing to do really well in terms of market performance, thus making it quite obvious that the consumer behaviour
has hardly been affected by the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
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