Analyst: Video Game Industry Might Grow During September

A new report from market analysts firm Wedbush Securities says that the United States video game market might actually report a grow for the month of September, thanks mostly to very good software sales.

Michael Pachter, who is an analyst with Wedbush and watches the video game industry, has stated that sales of video games might reach 635 million dollars (about 465 millions in Euro at the current exchange rate) which is about 4 percent more than during last year.

This is mainly because players have bought big quantities of titles like FIFA 12 from EA Sports, Gears of War 3 from Epic Games and Microsoft and Resistance 3 from Insomniac and Sony.

The fact that Madden NFL 12 from EA Sports has been launched late in August also helped the picture in September.

Wedbush also estimates that October might be a good month in terms of sales because of the late launches of Batman: Arkham City from Warner Bros. and Rocksteady and Battlefield 3 from DICE and Electronic Arts.

When it comes to hardware the analysis firm says that all hardware will be down pretty significantly, with the leader again being the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, which is projected to sell 360,000 units, which is about 26 percent down over the same period of last year.

The PlayStation 3 from Sony will manage about 260,000 units, which is a decrease of about 17%, while the Nintendo Wii will move just 190,000 to gamers, down 256 percent.

The hardware chart would not be complete without the Nintendo 3DS, which has seen the effects of the August price cut and has managed to sell 225,000 handhelds, while the normal DS sits on 185,000.

The NPD Group published monthly sales figures for the United States market have shown the video game industry performing worse than in 2010 for virtually every month of the current year.