14 DAY TRIAL // The NPD Group is expected to soon release its sales figures for the month of January 2012 on the United States video game market, and at least one analyst believes that the decline of the industry will continue and that overall sales will slow down by about 15 percent when compared to the same period of last year.
When it comes to hardware, Michael Pachter, an analysts working with Wedbush Morgan, estimated that sales would come in at “175,000 Wii units (down 45 percent year-over-year), 390,000 Xbox 360 units (up 2 percent), 235,000 PS3 units (down 12 percent), 65,000 DS units (down 78 percent), and 215,000 3DS units.”
The drop of hardware will be of about 18 percent over the same period of last year in terms of value, mainly because hardware makers were forced to cut prices during 2011 in order to drive up demand.
Still Pachter has suggested that even more cuts are needed in order to drive up demand before the likes of Sony and Microsoft announce and then launch a new generation of home consoles.
On the software side, the analyst believes that the decline will be lower, of about 12%, mainly because publishers were not interested in launching any high-profile games during the first few weeks of the year.
Big titles, like Soulcalibur V from Namco Bandai and Final Fantasy XIII-2 from Square Enix, were launched during the last days of January and their sales impact will be seen during the coming months.
By comparison, in 2011 January saw the release of both Dead Space 2, the space-based horror shooter from Electronic Arts, and Little Big Planet 2 from Media Molecule and Sony, which pushed sales up.
Pachter believes that the biggest games for January 2012 will be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which will move 800,000 units to players, and Just Dance 3 from Ubisoft, which is expected to also sell 600,000 copies.