The videogames industry grew, by only a small margin, in September mainly on the strength of the price reductions for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 and with strong help from the sales of Halo 3: ODST. But most analysts believe that the rebound is not something set to last.

Doug Creutz, who is an analyst for the Cowen Group, sees 2009’s declining overall close to 3% over 2008. The decline can be noticed on how big franchises are performing worse than expected, with a big release like Madden NFL 10 selling 13% less than last year. He believes that Electronic Arts will have trouble meeting its financial projections and that trouble might be heading the way of THQ, too.

Colin Sebastian, who watches the videogames market for Lazard Capital, thinks that there is reason for optimism for the coming months. He stated that “On an average sales per week basis, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 sales increased 87 percent, 33 percent, and 31 percent, respectively,” which might lead to a sustained recovery once 2010 comes around and some of the delayed games, like Starcraft II and Mass Effect 2, arrive.

Until then, Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin's Creed 2 are set to generate some “modest growth” when November rolls out. He sees even the mighty Nintendo actually announcing that it will get less profit than expected this year.

Todd Mitchell, from Kaufman Bros., also sees a mixed period for the coming months. He said that “While stronger-than-expected hardware sales bodes well for future software sales, there is no denying that software sales were disappointing,” adding that “overall software trends are weak enough that we would expect downward revisions in overall industry and company-specific growth for the remainder of the year.” In other words, the videogame recession is set to continue for a while.