A recent Nielsen report, titled The Value Gamer: Play and Purchase Behavior in a Recession, suggests that the economy is responsible for people buying more used games and spending more time with the games they already have. Also, based on the image on the front of the report (pictured), today's gamers are unable to afford hairbrushes or enthusiasm.

This current recession has prompted many in the video game industry to ask how gamers have responded. This analysis indicates that over the past several months, gamers claim to have been playing more and buying more used game year-over-year....This has increasingly come at the expense of new games when looked at as a share of the total....Sales of used games increased by 31.9% compared to last year, while new game software sales decreased by 2.8%.

The Nielsen report notes that this spike in used game sales should be even bigger when summer sales are calculated. Used games sales traditionally get a boost during the summer. You can read a PDF of the report here.

Of course, this could all be because of this guy buying a 1990 commemorative NES cartridge for $17,500. Way to skew the data, dude.