In spite of the release of the retail sales behemoth Destiny last month, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter predicts that NPD will report contraction of sales in September from last year. The chief reason here is not Destiny’s sales, which, at an estimated 2.75 million units sold, easily topped software charts, but rather the simple fact that Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V released in this same period last year, and with it’s mind boggling 7 million copies sold last year, remains uncontested.
That, alongside the later release of NBA 2K this year, means that September’s launch schedule led to lower software sales than last year’s monstrous revenues. Pachter expects the US retail software industry for video games to have generated $435 million.
Of course, Destiny’s sales are pretty good in this situation, though given the poor reviews and horrible word of mouth that the title has been met with, it remains to be seen if it can maintain any kind of retail performance over the long run.