14 DAY TRIAL // The NPD Group is expected to put out the hardware and video game sales charts for North America for the month of December later this week and ahead of them analysts have said that they are expecting a pretty good month for the gaming industry, with the Xbox 360 home console from Microsoft seeing a significant increase in sales over the same period of 2009.
Micheal Pachter, who is an analyst watching the video game market for Wedbush Morgan, has stated, “We expect strong sales for the Xbox 360 due to Kinect, and we believe that Kinect console bundles sold especially well. PS3 sales should be down, as sales from Move are unlikely to offset difficult comparisons from last September's price cut.”
The analysts says that the Microsoft platform has managed to sell about 2.5 million units during December while the Wii stood at 2.6 million, which is about one third lower than during the same period in 2009, with the PlayStation 3 far behind, moving 1.2 million units to players, a decrease of 12 percent.
Overall the hardware category will be down again, mainly because of the price cuts that have limited revenue generated although physical sales might have increased for some devices.
When it comes to software, Pachter says that the industry will see an increase of about 2 percent to reach a value of more than 2.6 billion dollars.
Leading video games will be Call of Duty: Black Ops from Treyarch and Activision, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood from Ubisoft, Just Dance 2 and Donkey Kong Country Returns.
Pachter says, “This month was particularly difficult to estimate, as the surprisingly high volumes for Kinect (around 3 million units sold in the U.S. alone during the month) drained many consumers' wallets, and may have affected their ability to purchase software.”
One of the big performers has been the Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft, which is exclusive to the PC and is not included in the NPD Group figures.