The video game industry will see a decline during the month

Oct 10, 2012 20:31 GMT  ·  By

Doug Creutz, an analyst who is watching the video game industry for Cowen & Company, has revealed that he expects the NPD Group sales figures for September, which will be revealed later during the week, to show a 28 percent decline in packaged game sales when compared to the same period last year.

The analyst says that the best-selling game of the tracked period will be Madden NFL 13, the EA Sports simulation of American football, which has managed to move 2.16 million units to fans, while second place will be occupied by Borderlands 2, the shooter from developer Gearbox and publisher 2K Games, with sales of 1.57 million in its packaged form.

Creutz also believes that PC game sales have increased by 101 percent when compared to September 2011 mainly because of the late month launch of the Mists of Pandaria expansion for the World of Warcraft MMO, which has moved 640,000 units to players in the United States, a majority of them via digital distribution.

Cowen & Company says that the decline in video games sales will continue for the rest of 2012 despite the launch of the new Wii U home console from Nintendo and the launch of high-profile games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Assassin’s Creed III and FIFA 13.

Doug Creutz says that he expects to see both Sony and Microsoft launch their next generation of home consoles in the fall of 2013.

So far, neither of the two companies has made any sort of official announcement about their plans and they are both insisting that they have long-term plans for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360.

The Wii U will be offered on November 18 to gamers in North America, 12 days later to those in Europe and, finally, on December 8 to Japanese fans of Nintendo.