Analyst: November Game Sales Up 7 Per Cent

— -- Analyst predictions for November are safely in the black, forecasting sales of $1.4 million, up 7% from last year's totals. Not great, but not exactly bad either, right? Even better when you consider this November only included two days of post-holiday sales (11/28 - 11/29) compared to last year's eight total (11/23 - 11/30).

Wedbush Morgan describes October sales -- 35% year-over-year -- as "rebounding" from September's 6% decline. November's 7% number thus only looks like a downturn because of the "unfavorable calendar shift" with a full holiday week less to draw from.

Hardware: The Wii's sell-through numbers are estimated at 1.4M, the Xbox 360's 800,000, and the PS3's 400,000. Wedbush Morgan thinks gift-giving of consoles was "muted" and expects a year-over-year decline in handheld unit sales (5%), but growth of 17% in console unit sales, which heralds "robust" software sales growth for 2009. Update: Reuters reports that Nintendo is claiming Wii sales of some 800,000 units during the Thanksgiving holiday week alone, which would be more than twice the number of units sold during the same period last year.

Software: Xbox 360 software growth year-over-year is estimated at 2%, the Wii's 70%, and the PS3's 55%. The 360's number is low because of Halo 3's sales presence last year (2% growth here indicates market stability across multiple titles). Both Sony and Nintendo had plenty of room to grow here, thus their much higher numbers, relatively speaking.

Tune in this coming Thursday evening for our take on NPD's official November numbers.