Sebastian: November sales will be up 10 to 15 percent

On Monday, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter gave investors his expectations for the industry-tracking NPD Group's November US software sales tally. Pachter predicted that the NPD Group would show that last month's domestic game sales tally would be 12 percent higher than that of November 2005.

Yesterday, Pacific Crest Securities' Evan Wilson weighed in with his own assessment of the month's US retail gaming revenue, saying the figure would actually turn out closer to 16 percent higher than the year before.

Perhaps the third time is the charm, as Lazard Capital Markets' Colin Sebastian today offered still another prediction of NPD November US game sales, estimating that the industry's revenue was up between 10 percent and 15 percent for the month. Across all consoles, he expected the top sellers to include Need for Speed Carbon, Madden NFL 07, Call of Duty 3, Guitar Hero 2, WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2007, Gears of War, and Final Fantasy XII.

Sebastian also touched on what he expected the PS3 and Wii tie ratios (the number of games sold in relation to systems) to be. Falling roughly in line with specialty retailer GameStop's already reported tie ratios, Sebastian expected between one and two PS3 games sold for each system, with the Wii averaging between two and three games sold for each unit of the hardware.

NPD is expected to release its US software sales figures for the month of November Thursday afternoon.