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Analyst: February Not So Hot, March Could Be Better
NPD is planning to release sales numbers for February this Thursday, but that doesn’t prevent speculation about what’s to come. According to Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets, expect to see software sales in February 2010 down 15 percent from the same period in 2009. Sebastian says that BioShock 2 and Dante’s Inferno only did so much to bolster a relatively disappointing game lineup.
The good news is that he's cautiously optimistic about March. According to Sebastian, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is performing well and that preorders are strong for God of War III, too. That enthusiasm is tempered by the trend of games performing well in their first month of availability before sales taper off in following months. Nintendo’s long-tail strategy seems to be something that others would do well to emulate.
Sebastian expects to see some interesting developments from this week’s GDC conference, including new details about Sony’s motion-sensing controller. Jumping on the what’s-this-thing-called bandwagon, he refers to the device as “aka Arc.”
We’ll have the official NPD information available Thursday, when the group actually releases some numbers. In the meantime, at least we can take solace that someone sees a bright future for game sales in the near future.
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