Analyst expects October sales up 25 percent

The last three months of the year are a key stretch for the game industry, as the holiday season represents a disproportionately huge amount of the gaming world's annual take. And while the industry-tracking NPD Group isn't expected to release its figures for the first leg of the year-end sales marathon until next week, one analyst is already issuing his own projections.

Pacific Crest Securities' Evan Wilson previewed the NPD figures in a note to investors today, expecting that the combined US console and handheld sales for October 2006 will be up 25 percent year-over-year. Where last October pulled in $365 million, Wilson expects this year's tally to reach $456 million. That's a significant boost, but it still falls short of the October 2004 tally, when the release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas drove receipts up to $479 million.

Wilson attributed the growth to resurgent spending on the PlayStation 2, growth in the DS market, and the addition of Xbox 360 sales (the system still hadn't been released last October). For the year, Wilson still expects growth in the US industry to hit about 9.6 percent.

As for the imminent launches of the Wii and PlayStation 3, Wilson tweaked his expectations on each system's tie ratio (the number of games sold per console). Wilson expects 2.6 games sold for every PS3 and 3.8 for every Wii. He noted that the Xbox 360 enjoyed a tie ratio of 4.1 for its launch last year, but pointed out mandatory bundles from retailer preorders and online sales could still push those numbers up.