Here's a link to Gamespot referencing the 28% increase. Again, these reports are not released to the public, but to institutional investors and certain media ;)
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6184692.html
Finally, you might want to redo your math.
3.75M units * 60 = 225M not $2.23B. You're thinking of 37.5M units. BTW, Halo 3 sold 3.3M it's first month.
Also, as a note, $2.3B is a monster record as NPD has NEVER been north of $2B in a month (prior to this one).
Just about every analyst that has released a report on December's data pegs the total software sales at somewhere between 2.1 and 2.5 billion. We'll go with a nice median and assume it did 2.3 Billion.
Assuming an average cost/game at $60/piece, that means in total you only have about 3.75 million units for all software sales put together.
We know that the top sellers are Assassin's Creed, Mario Galaxy, CoD4, Guitar Hero III, Rock Band, and SmackDown Vs Raw 2008 as well.
Are we going to assume that out of all of those major games, over 50% of all games sold in December were Call of Duty 4? Something sounds fishy to me about that, especially if We're Predicting 1 Million Mario Galaxy Sales as well.
All I can find is a comment by SonyCowboy here predicting 2 million sales for CoD4 in an internet forum discussing some analyst predictions. PLEASE tell me there is something more substantial than a forum post to back up the claim that COD4 did 2 million in th e US alone, especially since that would count for over half of the total Software Sales predicted by the highest estimate we have, which is 2.2 Billion. Where are people getting these numbers from, or are certain people just trying to manipulate the exchange?
Alternatively, if the analyst quoted before is correct, and CoD4 sales across all SKUs was 2 million for Dec and assuming X360 is still majority share like in Nov, then it may still have some good upside profit left, even at the current price. Only NPD will prove which source was the more useful indicator to actual retail performance :)
Depends who is closer to NPD. But if the usually over-optimistic VGChartz is closer to NPD, then yes, buying Dec future for this is bad idea, short selling maybe better but I am overstretched with no margin left.
3
The source was an analyst at Bear Sterns posted by Sonycowboy several days ago.
http://www.thesimexchange.com/news-item.php?id=16972
I was downbid for commenting on it too :(