Michael Pachter believes that the current trend of poor sales and negative growth in the gaming industry won’t change until the next-gen consoles are out by next year. The Wii U comes out this year with Sony and Microsoft’s consoles to follow next year.
There are a lot of games coming out in the holiday season, including major ones like Assassin’s Creed 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Halo 4 and more, and these games will reverse the declines posted, but unless there are major games released at a regular rate, the industry won’t grow at a good pace.
“We [Wedbush Morgan] expect October – December to be relatively flat, and expect a return to negative territory again next year, at least until the launch of a next-generation console from Microsoft or Sony,” he said. (Via GI.Biz)
“A new console cycle is likely to reverse the negative sales trends of the last several years,” Pachter continued, “with next-generation consoles expected from each of the three manufacturers over the next 18 months.
“Nintendo will launch the Wii U on November 18, and, while neither Sony nor Microsoft has yet announced new hardware, we expect a PS4 no later than November 2013, and a next Xbox no later than March 2014.
“We believe that the publishers plan an unprecedented number of new games for launch in the first two years of the next generation, providing relief from the gamer fatigue we’ve seen over the last three years,” he concluded.
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