Analyst: NPD will show March was a winner for software sales

by Alexander Sliwinski { Apr 7th 2008 at 5:08PM }

The March NPD report is expected next week, but Lazard Capital Market's Colin Sebastian believes software sales will be up 35% for the month. GameDaily reports Sebastian expects top sellers to include Army of Two, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, and continued success by Call of Duty 4 and Rock Band. Thanks, in no small part, also goes to a little game called Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Sebastian believes an early Easter holiday and spring break for students assisted software and hardware sales. Speaking of hardware, the analyst believes that that his forecast of six to eight million Wiis being sold in North America during 2008 will "likely prove conservative" due to titles like Wii Fit. He expects healthy growth in the industry leading into the summer due to games expected this year like GTA IV, Mario Kart, GT5: Prologue, MGS 4 and Spore.

Tags: colin-sebastian, lazard, npd, sebastian

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Phillip @ Apr 7th 2008 5:26PM

In other news, publishers learn that we play games all year. Not just December.

Phil

ApolloIV @ Apr 7th 2008 9:34PM

And I shit a brick...

Lone Starr @ Apr 7th 2008 5:30PM

I'm not sure how I feel about the whole Army of Two as a top seller thing.

copa @ Apr 7th 2008 5:31PM

So will Microsoft continue to claim 'shortages' on the XBox 360?

They are in stock at Amazon, yet sales are trailing the Wii and the PS3 by a large margin.

Methinks they are desperately trying to bide for time until GTA4 spurs a new round of hardware sales.

Zeus.:God @ Apr 7th 2008 6:36PM

I don't think they've been claiming that for a while now.

Microsoft isn't in any real trouble with or without PS3's 2008 lineup.

Mexicars @ Apr 7th 2008 6:55PM

their past 2 pre-NPD press releases have warned of supply shortages lasting up until April. In other words, as early as last month they've conceded that March NPD numbers will be low (just like how it was in jan & feb '08). Supposedly, April is the month where supplies go back to 'normal' obviously to meet expected demand thanks to GTA4.

Matt @ Apr 7th 2008 8:10PM

Yeah, and I don't think MS really cares about the Wii. Their true competitor is the PS3, the hardcore game system. Not the casual Wii Play, Cooking Mama, Link Crossbow Training crowd.

SoulBlade @ Apr 7th 2008 9:06PM

I'm pretty sure MS cares about the Wii... they see a lot of money in the casual market and have spent money trying to get it (see the Wiimote rip off they apparently have in development, and see their Scene-It game). It would actually be stupid for MS (or Sony for that matter) to ignore the casual market as Nintendo's profits have soared because of it.

They'll put whatever spin they have to if they come in last. Perhaps they won't have to spin it, but they definitely care about every player in the industry, and you can bet they're taking notes for the next go around.

jsn @ Apr 8th 2008 7:55AM

Of course they care about the Wii in terms of dollars. They're similar products that have "some" crossover. So they'd like to capture some of that money, but in the grande scheme of things the Wii isn't competition for them. It's like comparing a calculator to a laptop.