The Total Software Sales NPD December 2007 looks potentially to be significantly inflated to me.
@ $2.5B in sales, it's assuming a 60% jump over last year. This despite a few factors.
1) December has lost the week after Christmas to November (which helps to account for the 62% jump in November). In it's place, it gets Dec 30th - Jan 5, a much, much weaker week. If you normalize the data, this number essentially would be predicting a 75% increase in sales
2) Last years $1.73B was an industry record (which almost every year gives us), and while COD4, SM Galaxy, Assassins' Creed, Guitar Hero, & Wii Play are going to dazzle, we lose 800k of Gears of War, 1.5M units of Zelda, 875k of Cars, and the traditional franchises looking to have lost substantial steam. (Madden, NFS, Tony Hawk, & Smackdown).
A 30% or less increse in the face of the change in the retail calendar looks much safer to me, which would translate to $2.1B in sales.
I'm very, very bullish on SW sales with the 360, Wii, & DS doing so well, but the number just looks way too big to me.
5
@ $2.5B in sales, it's assuming a 60% jump over last year. This despite a few factors.
1) December has lost the week after Christmas to November (which helps to account for the 62% jump in November). In it's place, it gets Dec 30th - Jan 5, a much, much weaker week. If you normalize the data, this number essentially would be predicting a 75% increase in sales
2) Last years $1.73B was an industry record (which almost every year gives us), and while COD4, SM Galaxy, Assassins' Creed, Guitar Hero, & Wii Play are going to dazzle, we lose 800k of Gears of War, 1.5M units of Zelda, 875k of Cars, and the traditional franchises looking to have lost substantial steam. (Madden, NFS, Tony Hawk, & Smackdown).
A 30% or less increse in the face of the change in the retail calendar looks much safer to me, which would translate to $2.1B in sales.
I'm very, very bullish on SW sales with the 360, Wii, & DS doing so well, but the number just looks way too big to me.