I don't know if this warranted a whole article..this is pretty common sense to everyone already, the summer thing. Bit sensationalist, really.

The majority of the hardcore gaming demographic are teenagers, young adults, and 20-somethings. Most of them have gone back to school and can't dedicate the same amount of time to check out the blogs as they did during the summer. School starts for some children as early as August.

I think this is a good piece. Though I'm not sure about the conclusions drawn regarding smaller sites - smaller sites tend to have larger deltas. Summer ending can account for 10-20% drop AT LEAST based on my observations these past 5-6 yrs. I kind of wonder at the data though, forgetting that Alexa isn't completely accurate, the charts you're showing are the % reach charts, which calculates traffic against the rest of the world. I always assumed that means that if the world is gripped by other important factors it can actually drag down the % reach even with zero loss in traffic. Take for example the 4 major things happening at this time:

1. US financial crisis
2. US Elections
3. GLOBAL financial crisis thanks to US financial crisis
4. Summer ending

Out of the above, #1-3 are unique to this year alone. So if people are spending 10-20% less time on gaming sites due to summer, and others spend an additional 10-15% following the other major world events, it might just correlate to what's happening to the Alexa charts for most of the sites - Kotaku being the exception of course.

This topic would be interesting to revisit during the mid-late Dec period and again next summer when most of the target audience has time off.

I haven't noticed this at all? I'm often going to gaming sites, and I haven't noticed a big slow down of traffic...
Unless you mean the actually people going there.

Its because devs realesing so many damn good games this fall that people spend more tiem playing video games then talking about them. There we go,problem solved

its because Sony lost thier mojo.

Then their should be more articles about that, instead we get a loss in activity.

I noticed a slight loss of activity in gamegrep recently, but I thought it was because of the recent bugs and shuffling around.

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One bit of evidence for this would be the site you're on right now. SlapStic has seen a traffic increase of 321% over the past three months, a number that's simply extraordinary. Traffic to GirlsDontGame has increased by 22%, and Old-Wizard's traffic has shot up an impressive 48%. These sites are ones that don't just report news. They have a distinct personality. They write articles that appeal to very specific types of people, and aren't afraid to give their opinion when something just sucks.

This could show that people are waking up and realising that all gaming sites are the same and that unique sites are more worth their time.

There should be a follow-up to this article in mid-December. I'd really be interested in the results then.