14 DAY TRIAL // The middle of July is coming up shortly and that means that soon the NPD Group will release its official sales figures for the month of June for the United States video game market.
Ahead of the official figures analysts have also weighted in, saying that they expect the Xbox 360 from Microsoft to be the best-selling video game console while the best-selling game of the month will be The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D.
Michael Pachter, who works for research firm Wedbush Morgan, says that the Microsoft platform will have its sixth consecutive month at the top of the chart, followed, in this order, by the Ninendo Wii, the 3DS and DS and the PlayStation 3 from Sony.
When it comes to releases, he expects to see Duke Nukem Forever and Infamous 2 also do well during June while L.A. Noire will also deliver another strong performance.
Pachter stated, “It is important to note that we project the 3DS installed base to be under 900,000 units, so sales of Zelda will likely be only 200,000 - 250,000 units.”
Doug Creutz, who works for Cowen & Company, has added, that “several key June releases disappointed... Take-Two's Duke Nukem Forever and THQ's Red Faction: Armageddon appear to have been negatively impacted by poor reviews; we expect June console unit sales of 375K and 125K, respectively.”
He also expects Alice: Madness Returns and Shadows of the Damned to under perform.
When it comes to hardware sales, EEDAR estimates that the Xbox 360 will manage to sell 350,000 units during June, which is a strong performance but almost 25 percent lower than the numbers posted during the same month of 2010.
The Wii is expected to come in at 345,000 units, followed by the normal DS line, with 285,000 units and the PS3, with 250,000.
The 3DS is expected to sell a rather disappointing 150,000 handhelds during the month of June.