Analysts: September sales up 44 percent

UPDATE: NPD has confirmed to GameSpot that the data called into question by Piper Jaffray is indeed accurate. Some minor changes were made in the updated report that was issued the next day, but none of them affected the overall sales analysis as originally reported below.

Industry analysts at Piper Jaffray reported today that the NPD numbers for the month of September have been released, but errors in the data mean that investors should not trade their shares based on NPD numbers until a corrected report is issued later tonight.

"NPD has advised its subscribers that the September sales data has confirmed errors," read the report, "and that the extent of the problems are unknown."

The current "bad" data reports that September sales of video game software were up 44 percent year-over-year, ahead of Piper Jaffray's estimate of 15-20 percent. Sales of Xbox software increased 87 percent, Game Boy Advance software sales increased 86 percent, GameCube software sales were up 39 percent, and PlayStation 2 software sales saw an increase of 29 percent. By publisher, Microsoft (446 percent), Activision (136 percent), and Nintendo (118 percent) saw the largest year-on-year sales jumps for the month of September.