November video game software sales will be $1.4 billion, up seven percent, according to a forecast from Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter.
“November includes only two days of sales post-Thanksgiving, compared to nine days of sales last year, so the gift-giving bump for software and hardware sell-through should be lower year-over-year,” Pachter said.
Gears of War 2 was likely a big seller in November, with the title pushing 300 million copies sold.
“Microsoft’s Gears of War 2 likely sold as many as 3 million units during the month, resulting in over $180 million in sales of that game alone, compared to Microsoft’s overall sales of just $62 million last November.”
“Similarly, we think that strong Wii hardware sales and better supply of Wii Fit likely resulted in Nintendo sales of $120 million combined for Wii Play and Wii Fit, compared to just $28 million in sales last year.”
“Bethesda announced in November that its Fallout 3 had sold 4.7 million units, although October NPD results showed that only 510,000 units had sold through in the U.S. that month. While it is possible that sales of the game were somewhat higher in Europe, we expect to see as many as 1.5 million units (around $90 million) in November, allowing Bethesda to capture significant share during the month.”
“Thus, although we estimated that the publishers we cover had relatively flat year-over-year sales, we expect Microsoft and Bethesda to account for the bulk of the November sales gains,” he said.
