Everybody's favorite market analyst when it comes to videogames, Michael Patcher from Wedbush Morgan, has said that he expects the monthly sales for March to reach a figure of no less than 850 million dollars for the US market, which is around 50% higher than the figure for March 2007.

Patcher says that in the gaming console market the Nintendo DS will again dominate sales, with the Wii from the same company hot on its heels. Both should register around 700,000 units sold in the world's largest console market. Patcher expects the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation 2 to both sell better than the Microsoft Xbox 360 with bottom place in his analysis going to the PlayStation portable.

In his press release Patcher said that: "The Wii supply situation has made forecasting unit sales quite difficult. Since April 2007, Nintendo has manufactured 1.8 million Wiis per month, implying that U.S. share should be somewhere between 720,000 - 900,000 units per month (40 - 50% of total units produced). We believe that Nintendo has diverted a significant portion of its available supply to Europe since April, as the weakening dollar has made U.S. sales less profitable for the company."

A different set of predictions, this time from the analysts at theSimExchange, paint a rather different picture, with overall sales numbers smaller than the ones Wedbush Morgan predicts, and with the PlayStation Portable ahead of the PlayStation 3 in the sales chart. Numbers for both the Wii and the DS are over 100,000 units under the sales figures that Wedbush Morgan predicts for the same consoles.

All of these predictions come as the NPD is set to release its numbers for March sometime on April 17. It will provide both analysts and the general public as to the trends in videogame sales and gaming consoles sales, while also showing whether the US economic downturn has had any effect on the videogame industry as a whole.