5 Gaming Stocks to Watch After NPD Group Report

Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:EA)

Shares of Electronic Arts, a major game publisher, opened significantly lower before quickly making a recovery. The NPD report said that software sales for 2012 fell 23 percent, from $8.69 billion to $6.71 billion. At a glance, this is a scary decline, and anybody with a head on their shoulders would reasonably fear for game publishers’ revenues.

But the woes of the gaming industry have been under scrutiny for a while. Gaming stocks across the board came down substantially in 2012 — Electronic Arts has fallen 27 percent over the last 52 weeks — and long-term industry observers were not surprised by the figures.