14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that while a rebound in the videogame industry is still planned for 2010, it will probably not happen in February. The NPD Group is set to deliver the sales numbers for the United States market later this week and should point to a slowing down of sales when compared with the same period of 2009, which itself was not a very good month for gaming.
Michael Pachter, who is an analyst with Wedbush Morgan, has issued a note to investors saying that the fall will likely come in at about 10%, mostly because of slowing sales of hardware platforms and because of the significant slowdown seen in the once mighty music genre.
The analyst says that the Nintendo Wii will move about 455,000 units during February, again getting the top spot in terms of sales, although it will also represent a 40% drop over February 2009. The Xbox 360 is expected to sell about 350,000 consoles during the same period, which is again down when compared to last year, while Sony's PlayStation 3 will see an increase of about 10%, reaching 300,000 units.
On the software side, it seems that the top ten will see a battle at the top between BioShock 2, from 2K Games, and Mass Effect 2, which came out in late February. Other titles expected to do well are Dante's Inferno from Visceral and Electronic Arts, Wii Fit Plus, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Modern Warfare 2.
There's also hope for the future, with Pachter stating that “The release schedule over the next four months gives us great confidence in our forward forecast. In addition to highly anticipated titles like Sony's God of War III, Square Enix's Final Fantasy XIII, Nintendo's Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M, and Activision's Starcraft II, we expect no fewer than 12 games released in the first half of 2010 to sell more than 1 million units apiece, with at least six selling more than 3 million units. In the first half of 2009, there were only eight games that sold more than 1 million units, with only one selling more than 3 million units.”