Despite the release of several high profile games, including
a new entry from one of the largest franchises in the industry, video game retail sales for March are expected to tumble once again.
The NPD Group will release March brick and mortar sales figures Thursday after the market closes. Analysts expect software sales to fall between 8 and 10 percent. One of the major factors they’re citing is the shift of this year’s Easter holiday into April.
After a year of disappointing sales figures 
and investor malaise, the video game industry is feeling some seasonal cheer.
The kick off to the holidays has been a boom time for game makers this year – with stellar sales for both hardware and software.
The question for investors, though, is whether this seasonal bump is the start of a turnaround for gaming companies – or just a short-term surge that will fade away by the end of December.
Gamers have enthusiastically answered 
Activision Blizzard’s “Call of Duty,” as the publisher celebrated Veterans Day with a victory as its military videogame became the biggest entertainment launch in history.
That record already belonged to the industry’s biggest gamemaker when Activision’s “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” stormed into stores last November.
Even “Halo: Reach” couldn’t bring 
the video game industry out of its slump in September.
Software sales at retail stores were down a shocking 6 percent last month to $614 million, according to The NPD Group. That’s vastly worse than analysts were expecting and could scare investors, who were holding out hope that September would be a bright spot in an otherwise dismal year for game sales.
The consensus among 
analysts and industry observers was that strong sales of “Halo: Reach” would be enough to bring video game sales into positive territory in September.
The consensus was wrong. Very, very wrong.
Read more at Variety’s Technotainment blog
So now it’s official: Microsoft’s first-person behemoth Halo: 
Reach is the year’s biggest entertainment event,generating $200 million in sales in just 24 hours in the United States alone.
That’s two-thirds of what Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 took in from the North American and U.K. markets in its first day last year, but it’s still a number that’s nothing to sneeze at. The one-day take already eclipses the three-day opening weekends of “Iron Man 2,” “Toy Story 3” and “Alice in Wonderland.”
Analysts and industry observers were expecting 
June’s video game sales numbers to be pretty awful. Unfortunately, they were right.
Software sales tumbled 15 percent last month to $531.3 million, according to The NPD Group, which tracks retail sales of video games. A surge in hardware sales, spurred by temporary price cuts to the Xbox 360, salvaged the industry’s overall total, though it was still six percent lower than last year.
June was another crummy month for video game 
sales – just like pretty much every other month this year. But, on the upside, a clearance sale on existing Xbox 360 hardware bumped hardware sales into positive territory.
Total sales for the industry came in at $1.1 billion, 6 percent behind last year’s pace, according to The NPD Group. Software sales, which are the number most people pay the closest attention to, were down 15 percent though, while hardware sales increased 5 percent.
The good news is video game software sales were up 
4 percent in May. The bad news is people were expecting them to be about twice as high. The OTHER bad news is that video game hardware sales were down 20 percent in May – dragging the industry as a whole down 5 percent compared to the 2009 figures.
While any improvement is a good one, it’s becoming clear that the video game industry is not going to be able to easily shake off its ongoing slump. May was a month loaded with potential blockbusters, including “Red Dead Redemption,” “Alan Wake” and “Super Mario Galaxy 2”.
As the video game industry gets set to 
show off the games that will dominate the charts in the back half of 2010 and early 2011, what better time to see what has been driving sales for the first half of the year?
After a disappointing 2009, software sales are down 8 percent so far this year, according to the most recent numbers from the NPD Group, which tracks game sales. That’s a shortfall of over $500 million. The numbers should begin to rebound in the coming months – but so far, 2010 hasn’t been too encouraging.
Chris Morris: Journalist 