March Will Be Growth Month for Videogames

The NPD Group is set to publish its sales figures for both hardware and software in the United States later today and another analyst expects the market to be down when compared to the same period in 2009. Doug Creutz, who is working for the Cowen Group, is saying that sales will be down by about 2% for both hardware and software. Earlier, Michael Pachter, of Wedbush Morgan, said that he expected videogames to decline more than console sales, by 4% to 1%.

Doug Creutz believes that Mass Effect 2, which came out on February 26, is expected to take the number one in the sales chart, with 825,000 copies sold in five days, second place going to Darksiders from THQ, which is set to sell about 430,000 units.

The top five should include Army of Two: The 40th Day, and Bayonetta from SEGA, each selling about 300,000 copies. The analyst expects older titles like Wii Fit Plus and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to appear in the top ten as well. Overall, Electronic Arts is the publisher expected to have the best January, getting an increase of over 20% over last year.

Creutz also says that “We expect industry software sales to return to year over year growth during Q1, most likely in March, due to a strong release slate of core gamer titles and vastly easier comps.” Overall, the first months of 2010 have the potential to see growth mainly because of the glut of titles which have been pushed back from the 2009 holiday season, mainly because of a tough release schedule which saw a lot of AAA titles crowded together in a few short weeks.

March will also benefit from the release of God of War III, one of the biggest PlayStation 3 exclusive titles of 2010, expected to provide a huge boost of sales of the Sony home console.