14 DAY TRIAL // The NPD Group is getting ready to announce the monthly figures for July and analysts are predicting that this might be the worst 30 day period for the gaming industry in the United States since September of 2005, with the overall value of sales going down by no less than 27 percent when compared to the same period of last year.
Sales will probably be no higher than 320 million dollars, mostly driven by the launch of the Electronic Arts published NCAA Football 12, the only big name to be released during the month.
Doug Creutz and Jason Mueller, who are both analysts with Cowen & Company, have stated, “Otherwise, we believe there were no new releases in July that exceeded 200K units; combined with what is likely to be a poor follow-through from the disappointing June release slate, we expect July sales to decline significantly.”
Other games that could chart during the month are Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, the game which might benefit from the success of the associated movie, Captain America: Super Soldier, another movie tie-in, and Catherine, the weird relationship and puzzle title that has been reported to be the biggest North American launch ever for Atlus.
During the same month of 2010 the retail market was moved by the launch of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, the long awaited strategy game from Blizzard.
The analysts are also expecting August to be a bad month because of the late launch date for Madden NFL 12, the biggest game of the period.
When it comes to gaming console sales on the North American market the NPD Group figures are expected to show a drop in sales, with the Nintendo 3DS continuing to perform worse than expected and with the Xbox 360 managing to once again lead the hardware chart.