Games Thirst – Amazing Life
Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter isn’t looking for good news when the NPD Group releases its June videogame sales report, instead he predicts there’ll be a 34 percent year-over-year drop compared to the same time last year.
Pachter blames the dismal report on a “lackluster” games lineup, with Pokemon 2 and Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes topping the charts, followed by Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and Spec Ops: The Line – Lollipop Chainsaw is also expected to put up acceptable numbers.
“In this unprecedented eighth year of the console cycle, we believe there are few new intellectual properties to reinvigorate interest in the games sector/ Consumers have been offered a never-ending series of sequels, and have been offered fewer choices each year for the last several years, with the result being waning interest in new software purchases and an unprecedented three years of software sales declines,” Pachter said.
“The poster children for limiting consumer choice are Activision, Electronic Arts and THQ, with each company offering 50 percent as many titles as they offered several years ago, with only one new intellectual property launched among the three companies over the last year.”
NPD’s sales figures have fallen every month since last November.
