Analysts: September Xbox 360 Victory To Be Short-Lived

Following NPD's release of September sales results, Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter and simExchange's Jesse Divinch have said the industry is on "solid footing," and predicted that the Xbox 360's victory over Wii should be short-lived. Pachter noted that other analysts will likely note that without Halo 3's contribution to both software and hardware sales, growth was actually down 7 percent year over year. He added, though, "Although sales of Halo 3 accounted for all (and then some) of the growth during the month, the game clearly drove hardware sales that will position the industry for even greater sales in November and December, when many Halo players will be ready for a new challenge." Pachter said, in the end, that "the industry is on solid footing, and investor confidence has grown," and predicted that October NPD results will see strong performances by Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Tony Hawk's Proving Ground, Avatar: The Burning Earth and The Simpsons Game. Jesse Divinch of fantasy video game market prediction site simExchange noted that while PS3 exclusives Heavenly Sword and Lair were expected to drive console sales, the two still "managed to underperform," and PS3 sales saw a three month low. "In terms of how just the 80GB model price cut will affect PS3 October sales," said Divinch, "the prediction market only pushed its sales forecast up 3,000 units to 153,000 units. This strategy is not expected to change the PS3’s market share at the end of the season, which currently is last among the home consoles." Finally, though the Xbox 360 saw higher sales than both the Wii and DS, Divinch says the victory "is expected to be short lived with the Wii regaining the top spot for the remaining months in 2007." "In a way, the Wii is still victorious," he concluded. "The Wii faced many obstacles in September, including: hardware constraints, strong first party titles on other consoles, no strong releases of its own platform, and announcements of software bundling and price cuts from its competitors."