Every time an analyst opens his mouth, the Internet swells with comments like “What an idiot” or “I could do that job.” I have a lot of respect for analysts despite their seemingly dartboard approach to predictions. These are people with teams of researchers at their disposal, crunching away at numbers and reporting on the financial stability of game companies. They aren’t all gamers themselves.
I don’t think I have what it takes to write reports to stock holders, but I’ve always wondered if I could make decent predictions. So, I asked Destructoid if I could take a stab at being the “site analyst” and they accepted. Each month, I’ll be providing a summary of the previous month and giving my own predictions for the following month. I’m also going to take a stab at the hardware NPD numbers each month.
February 2009 was a great month for gaming in general, especially considering the state of the economy (unemployment rose to 8.1% in the U.S. in February). Nearly 20 million software sales in the U.S. and 2.33 million hardware sales took place in February.
From a hardware perspective, Nintendo cleaned up with 1.34 million units in sales between the Wii and DS. Microsoft realized its biggest non-holiday/non-Halo month since launch. Sony offloaded 606k in sales between the PS3, PSP and PS2.
In terms of software:
My predictions:
In February, I made two predictions. I was right on both.
On the surface, the March 2009 NPDs will look fantastic since they will be based on 5 weeks of data instead of 4. The biggest new software players in March will beResident Evil 5,Halo Wars,Pokémon Platinum, andGTA Chinatown Wars.Wii Fit,Wii PlayandMario Kartwill also show their face.Killzone 2may show up in the top 10, but it will be towards the lower end of the top 10 if it does. Expect 360 sales to be up with its favorable price point and newResident Evil5 SKU.
Based on historical figures and educated guesses, here are my predictions. I admit I’m new to this (and have never tried to predict sales in such great detail), so let’s see how I do:
Wii: 825k
DS: 725k
360: 450k
PS3: 325k
PSP: 210k
PS2: 125k
