Gearheads of War

I have been wondering about the subprime mess and how it affects our collective hobby video gaming.  You see gaming is a discretionary expenditure.  So as people face higher mortgages, higher gas prices, and even high food bills how is it that video game spending seems to keep increasing? If you think about the pending launch of Halo 3, MS is looking to rake in about $155M to possiblely up to $180M in a single day along with XXXX amnount of 360s being bought just to play the game.  

This leads me to wonder if the subprime mortage thing is being overblown because look, people can still buy Halo 3 and play it on their rather expensive 360s.  Or is that, that the money on Halo 3 will come out of other discretionary spending, like music and movies.  

OR

Is there something else at work here.  As we get older, yeah I am 39, I can definetly spend more on my hobby and there seems to be a lot of 'old' guys like me playing games.  I even went and got a big DLP TV, a new reciever, and I bought PS3 recently.  So yeah, I am spending and I have worked hard to support my gaming habit.  But if you read the news lots of people same to be losing their houses and it would seem that would hurt not only the hard core gaming market, but the casual one too.  

How about you college students or even HS students.  Have your parents been affected by the recent subprime shakup?  People are speculating some very bad things ahead, ie. recession to all out depression.  But the Video game industry pushes on despite all this.  I also fear a collapse for the game industry if either one hits hard.  People just will not be able to afford gaming if the crap does hit the fan.  

My bottom line is that as long as the game industry is seeing growth, I know the casual market is growing it right now, then our economy, at least in the US, is all right.  You see video games fall way down on the essential for life scale.  If you don't have money for food, shelter and warmth then you don't have money for video gaming. So what have been your observations?