Analysts Lewis Ward and Billy Pigeon meanwhile believe Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V will carry a lot more potency among the holiday purchasing habits, especially it coupled with price drops.
Some retailers have been ending their pre-order programs for the next-gen consoles as they have run out of allocations.
A lot of gamers will be clinging to their Xbox 360s, PS3s and Wii/Wii Us, ”at least until the 2014 holiday season, when the game catalog will be a lot bigger and some of the online kinks will have been worked out,” says International Data Corporation’s Lewis Ward. ”That also means that games like GTA V should have plenty of runway to sell well in the meantime, as long as they deliver the goods.” Rockstar is yet to voice anything about GTA V going ‘next-gen’.
”I’d expect the game to have a positive influence on hardware sales, particularly when bundled with hardware by retailers. If there are concurrent price drops for Xbox 360 and PS3, that positive effect will be even stronger,” concurred Pigeon. EDDAR’s Jesse Divnich sees the next-gen consoles as runaway freight trains at this point.
”PlayStation 4 and Xbox One continue to stay at the top of the charts on Amazon.com. Consumers are clearly excited for the next generation of consoles to launch. I don’t foresee one current generation game, no matter how large it is, impacting the start of the next generation of consoles,” he said.
Grand Theft Auto V releases on Xbox 360 and PS3 September 17th. GameStop in the US has ‘run out’ of PS4 allocations, and Best Buy has stopped Xbox One pre-orders. This week Rockstar released the first gameplay trailer.
