Analyst: Hardware makers' software share growing

In his NPD preview for July game sales, Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson looked back as well as forward. In tallying up the industry-tracking NPD Group's sales figures for the first half of 2007, Wilson noticed that first-party game sales are making up an increasingly larger part of the industry.

Wilson found that games published by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo represented more than 30 percent of total game sales revenue for the six-month period. He then compared it to the first six months of last year and the first six months of 2002 (like 2007, 2002 was the first full year after a transition to a new console generation). The analyst found that in each of those half-years, first-party game sales made up less than 20 percent of total game sales revenue.

As for what it means to the industry when the console makers are selling nearly half as many games as all of their third-party partners combined, Wilson said the outcome is actually mixed.

"A compelling lineup of first-party games has had a positive absolute dollar impact on the industry in this still-early phase of a console cycle," Wilson told GameSpot. "It compels consumers to upgrade to new hardware, especially in combination with third-party games. However, it has made it difficult for a few large publishers to maintain their historical percentage industry market share. The net result can be positive or negative depending on the individual publishers, although in every case it exacerbates competition in what is already an ultra-competitive year."

The first-party lineup for the rest of the year looks strong as well, with Microsoft launching Halo 3 and Mass Effect, Sony offering Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, and Nintendo bringing Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl to the Wii.