Gamasutra’s resident NPD data analyst Matt Matthews has done a thorough analysis of the industry sales report for October 2009. Pointing to the month’s recorded 19 percent drop in game sales, Matthews says even with the two strongest months of the year remaining game sales are tracking towards an annual decline. He predicts an 8.5 percent drop in sales compared to 2008 on revenues of about $19.5 billion. Matthews also looks at how Sony and Nintendo fared in the month. He says Sony’s surging PS3 hardware and software sales were somewhat offset by a dismal PSP Go launch that may have only moved 100,000 to 145,000 units. With Nintendo, he says Wii sales did beat PS3 and Xbox 360 for the month but points to a shrinking Wii software market. Wii game sales have seen sharp drops two months in a row, including a 35 percent decline in October.
Matthews offers a good cross-section of NPD data, with plenty of it charted. He also gets perspective on October figures and annual projections from NPD analyst Anita Frazier and Wedbush Morgan Securities Michael Pachter. Read more at Gamasutra.
