March NPD: US sales weakness to continue for "months," says Pachter

VG247:

However you dress it up, the 17 percent year-over-year revenue drop for the US games industry announced yesterday is "wince-worthy," to put it mildly. Worse, Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter said today that he expects the gloomy weather to stay with us for "months".He said in a note:We believe investor concern may be heightened, with double-digit negative sell-through implying that the video game consumer has "rolled over". The weak March results follow strong sales in prior months with last month’s +9%, January’s +10%, December’s +16%, November’s +11% and October’s +35%. In addition, combined next generation console and handheld hardware unit sales were down 19% year-over-year with 2.0 million hardware units sold in the month, giving us less confidence about the a reversal in software sales over the near term, especially given tough comps for the next four months.