Pachter: 'April game sales are baffling'

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has admitted that he is "baffled" by last month's decline in hardware and software sales.

Speaking to IndustryGamers, the industry expert said that the downturn could be a sign that something is "terribly wrong".

"The April sales results are baffling to us," he said. "The dollar sales level of $399 million (£274 million) is the lowest since May 2007, when this generation was barely underway, and is the weakest April result since 2005, when console software sales totalled only $6 billion (£4 billion) for the full year.

"The sequential decline of 54% is the greatest in the 11 years that we have been tracking monthly data (except for December-January declines), dwarfing the previous record of 42% set in March-April 2002."

He added: "It's easy to blame the line-up, which was quite light (Ubisoft's Splinter Cell Conviction was the only AAA title, and it was an Xbox 360 exclusive), but the results suggest something is terribly wrong."

Pachter challenged claims that core gamers are turning to online and casual fare and concluded that April's statistics were a "fluke".