Crispy Gamer News

With no real killer app to move hardware in the month for Sept. (last year it was Halo 3 for the Xbox 360), it’s no shock that the NPD hardware numbers are down from last year’s. The game industry enjoyed total sales of $1.27 billion, down from $1.35 billion from a year ago. While the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii continued to kick ass and take names, the Xbox 360 enjoyed a 78 percent increase, mainly due to the dramatic price cut as Microsoft prepares to do battle with Nintendo and Sony.

The Wii sold 687k units, the DS 536.8K, and the Xbox 360 347.2K. Full list - including year to date unit numbers - after the break. One thing to note - the PSP is beating the Xbox 360 and is just a tick away from catching up with the Wii.:

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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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