14 DAY TRIAL // Analyst Michael Pachter, who is working for Wedbush Morgan, has predicted that the NPD Group numbers that will be released later in the week will show a drop in both hardware and software sales on the North American market for the month of August, accentuating the slump in the video game industry that has been taking shape this year.
And Pachter has identified the culprit for the upcoming bad results to be players interest in multiplayer modes, which has kept them satisfied and has limited their desire to actually pick up any new titles during this year.
He stated, “Based upon statements made by Microsoft earlier this year, it appears that millions of people are playing multiplayer games online for an average of 10 hours a week, making a serious dent in the time available to play other games.”
Pachter is saying that hardware will lose 7 percent of sales value in August while video game sales will go down by 6 percent.
Another analyst, Evan Wilson from Pacific Crest Securities, believes that the decline for software will be even greater, reaching 18% for the month of August.
Both analysts agree that the biggest seller for the North American market is likely to be Madden NFL 11, the football simulation that publisher Electronic Arts has already claimed to have seen an increase in sales over 2009 of about 5%.
It's not clear how well Mafia II from 2K Czech and Take Two will perform but the game will probably take the second spot in the video game chart.
The comparison with August 2009 is a touch one because of the big impact made by the launch of Rocksteady's and Warner Bros' Batman: Arkham Asylum, which proved to be more than a simple movie tie in and managed to impress critics and sell very well before the big hits of the fall launched.