Analyst: January Videogame Sales to Fall by 4%

With the NPD Group set to release its figures for both hardware and software sales in the all important United States market, analysts are scrambling to offer their own assessments of the numbers in order to cement their reputation for being able to foresee the way the market evolves.

Michael Pachter, who is an analyst with Wedbush Morgan, has stated that he sees both the hardware and the software sales going down, although by different amounts. When compared to January 2009, sales of hardware will go down by about 1%, with the Nintendo Wii being the best seller, at about 550,000 units, and with the Nintendo DS handheld taking second place, with 525,000 devices in sales.

Pachter suggests that the Xbox 360 from Microsoft will beat out the PlayStation 3 from Sony by 340,000 units to 330,000, while the PSP will sell just about 150,000 units in one month.

When it comes to videogames, the analyst believes sales will only reach 655 million dollars, which is 4% lower than in 2009. Pachter has said that “We expect another precipitous decline in music genre sales to around $45 million compared to $82 million last January. The expected decline should account for more than 100 percent of the overall industry decline for the month.” The Wii is set to be the platform accounting for 37% of the sales of the month, being followed by the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.

Mass Effect 2, from BioWare and Electronic Arts, is set to be the biggest videogame of January, with more than 2 million units in sales, and Pachter also expects a strong performance from Darksiders, the action adventure title THQ put out. The rest of the top ten will be complemented by old favorites like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, New Super Mario Bros., Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort.