Crispy Gamer News

Analyst Michael Pachter, who some believe is the second coming, says that that the interactive entertainment is pretty much recession proof. Is the video game industry bullet proof when it comes to our lagging economy? The Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst thinks that, while there might be a slight decline in the sector for Sept., it will nonetheless be pretty darn profitable. But Pachter attributes this mostly to not having a killer app like Halo 3 to bolster software and hardware sales - at least for Microsoft and not the state of the economy or consumer confidence.

So what are his predictions for the Sept. numbers coming this Thursday from NPD? Sales will be down six percent to $620 million, compared to Sept. 2007 numbers due to no killer apps like Halo 3 - he says that if you ignore the Halo 3 effect, the numbers would show an increase of 44 percent. Other predictions include 600,000 Wii sales, 550,000 DS sales, around 300,000 Xbox 360 sales, PS3 sales of 175,000 and PSP sales of 200,000.

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GfK Group has bought a controlling interest in UK retail sales data tracker ChartTrack, according to published reports. The GfK Group has bought 46 percent of ChartTrack’s shares, adding to the nine percent stake the company already held. With this controlling interest in the group a new entity is being formed called GfK ChartTrack Limited

ELSPA, the UK trade organization for the interactive entertainment industry is pretty comfortable with the deal. The group has said in other published reports that the UK sales data firm will continue in its current activities unabated. ELSPA holds a 45 percent stake in ChartTrak along with the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA).
ChartTrack collects sales data in the United Kingdom for both video games and music and has done so rather successfully since its formation in 1996.

Source: MCV

Say what you will about a White Christmas, but for Microsoft, the holiday season was all about the green. The company recently announced that thanks to the holiday surge of sales, more than 17.7 million units of the Xbox 360 console have now been sold worldwide. Of course, what good is a console without some solid games to back it up? The company also announced some pretty hefty numbers for a couple of its big hitters: Mass Effect and Halo 3. In just six weeks since Mass Effect hit retail shelves, the title has sold more than 1.6 million copies. As impressive as that number is, it still pales in comparison to the recently announced 8.1 million copies of Halo 3 sold since its launch back in September. A quick check of the math means that roughly 45 percent of all Xbox 360 owners have picked up the final chapter of Master Chief’’s saga.

The full December videogame sales numbers will be released later this month, but it’’s a safe bet that Microsoft had a very merry Christmas indeed.