2009 saw more new game releases than last year

1,099 videogames games were released to retailers in America this year according to Electronic Entertainment Design and Research. That’s a little more than the amount of games released in 2008, which was 1,092. While it would seem that the amount of new game releases is holding steady, EEDAR’s Jesse Divnich believes that a number of factors are going to cause these numbers to drop over the coming years.

EEDAR told GameSpot that shelf space, consumer spending and of course, digital distribution, will contribute to the decline of new games hitting retail. Services like OnLive will also play a big factor in the decline of retail released games, that is if OnLive actually works.

Is this a bad thing? Not if you’re in favor of digital distribution which is what the industry is pushing itself more and more towards. I’m curious as to what the real number of new releases were for this year when you factor in PC, PSN, PSP minis, XBLA, DSiWare and WiiWare releases.

Game releases hold steady in 2009 [GameSpot, via Joystiq]