Reeves: Games trade is not recession-proof

SCEE president David Reeves has said that the game industry is not recession-proof, and that it's "difficult to explain" why PlayStation products are achieving European targets.

"From our point of view which is in the videogames division, in PlayStation, it's not recession-proof, of course," he told Dutch TV station RTL.

"I don't think any industry is, and eventually we may see a downturn."

Reeves said that SCEE's products are holding steady across Europe, and that much-cited recession-related factors surrounding the games industry of late may be causing the trade to be suffering less than other sectors.

"For the moment we're seeing that our sales for both hardware and software are hitting projections in most countries in Europe," he added.

"Difficult to explain: it could be that parents don't want to disappoint their children in buying PlayStations, or whether it's the competition as well... or maybe it's because people are spending more time at home and this is a safe haven, rather than going out to restaurants or spending money on buying cars and fridges and things like that.

"We seem to find that in timres of recession that people tend to stay at home, but they still want to be entertained."

The exec went on to assure that there will be no scaling back of SCEE staff "at all," despite Sony Corp recently announcing 8,000 job cuts.

Well worth a watch.