How long since Sony’s PlayStation 3 was selling pole position? Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter predicts they’ve finally grabbed the top slot in North American September hardware sales, reaching 410,000 units or a 76% improvement year-over-year. That’s against Nintendo with a projected 390,000 Wii units (down 45% from last year) and Microsoft with a projected 350,000 Xbox 360 units (up 1% year-over-year).
A bright spot everyone can celebrate: In his note, Pachter forecasts September video game software sales of $750 million versus last year’s $618 million, a 21% year-over-year upswing, and definitive return to double-digit growth after six months of double-digit declines.
Pachter predicts that September hardware unit sales will be 2,105,000 units–still down by 5% compared to September 2008–but notes the huge uptick over the last five months sales, which were down an average of 19%.
In related news, Sony’s Patrick Seybold told Kotaku sales of the PlayStation Portable shot up 300% following the release of the company’s new smaller, disc-free PSP Go. The launch also generated a “significant increase in revenue for [the] PlayStation Network, driven by a 200 percent lift in PSP game downloads purchased from [the] PlayStation Store” in North America.
NPD’s retail sales report releases next Thursday after market close.
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