simExchange: November Software Sales Exceed Predictions

by Cavin Smith on December 15, 2007 at 3:24 am

Undaunted by a floundering dollar, consumers are still spending their hard-earned cash on entertainment products for the holidays. Video game sales, in particular, have outstripped expectations according to virtual stock site simExchange.

$1.3 billion is a nice chunk of change. Would you guess that’s the amount of revenue the gaming industry earned through software sales last month? Even when struggling to mature, video games continue to prove their worth as one of the top choices for entertainment in America.

simExchange (which uses virtual stocks traded by gamers, developers, and other industry influentials as a basis) put initial predictions for the month at about 3.5 million software units, a number which was then exceeded by actual sales of around 4.3 million. The aforementioned revenue amounted to a 62% increase year-over-year.

Recorded increases were helped along by stronger-than-expected sales of Rock Band (147,900 predicted vs. 311,903 actual) and Call of Duty 4, which ended up taking the #1 spot for the month of November (840,000 predicted vs. 1,565,404 actual). And that’s only counting the 360 SKU (it sold 440,000 units on the PS3). Assassin’s Creed also exploded at an amazing 980,000 units (360) and 376,483 (PS3), record numbers for a new IP.

Oddly enough, Super Mario Galaxy underperformed by about 14%, though its roughly 1.2 million units sold is nothing to sneeze it, especially considering it didn’t have the advantage of being released on multiple platforms. Other disappointments included Unreal Tournament 3 (PC) at ~52% below expectations and dismal sales of Manhunt 2 (Wii). Predictions were around 48k, but the public didn’t bite, snatching up a mere 18,494 copies of the controversial game.

simExchange cites poor quality, as opposed to the hub-bub over its “realistic” kills, as the primary reason behind weak sales.

Hardware sales also soared, beating conservative estimates, with all major platforms selling more units that predicted aside from the Wii (which still took top honors anyway, proving that any “bad” news for the system is still actually good). Even then, it could’ve sold vastly more if the supply were there. Some good news for the PS3 (and, yes this counts as good news) is that it didn’t sell less than it actually did, closing the gap ever so slightly between it and the 360, which sold only 1.6-to-1 over Sony’s system instead of the predicted 1.8-to-1.

For more on simExchange’s November sales report, click through here.

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