Analyst: Video Game Sales Saw Increase in September

Michael Pachter, who is analyst watching the video game industry for Wedbush Morgan Securities, has said that the video game industry will manage to see a growth of 2.4 percent for the month of September over the same period of 2009, with the NPD Group numbers set to be released later in the week set to confirm the end of the decline in sales.

The prediction comes from an investor note the analyst sent out and Pachter believes that the main reason for the increase will be the launch of Halo: Reach, the science fiction based first person shooter from Bungie and Microsoft.

Overall sales will hit 665 million dollars and would apparently be even higher if the music genre did not disappoint.

Pachter believes that the recently released Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock only managed to sell about 100,000 units for the month while Rock Band 3 is set to arrive in late October.

Best selling titles, alongside Reach, are set to include FIFA 11, the football simulation from EA Sports which launched late in the month of September, and Dead Rising 2, the zombie killing action title from Capcom.

Sales numbers will also be boosted by good sales of Madden NFL 11, which launched in August, and continued strong performance from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

The analyst says that the PlayStation Move, the motion tracking peripheral from Sony for the PlayStation 3, has only managed modest sales in its launch month.

A strong performer in September was Civilization V, the turn based strategy title from Firaxis and 2K Games, which apparently managed to move about 350,000 copies to gamers but will not appear in the upcoming NPD chart, which does not include PC only launches.

Pachter also believes overall console sales will be down by about 18 percent over the same period of 2009, with the launch of Move and Kinect failing to make a significant impact.