Fierce battles will be waged on computer and TV screens this fall. U.S. forces will be grappling against ultra-nationalist Russian forces. Marines will be fighting insurgents on the border of Iraq and Iran. And a special team of soldiers will fight alien mutants in the American heartland.
But the real battles will be for the hearts and minds of gamers, between Electronic Arts (ERTS), Activision Blizzard (ATVI) and other game publishers.
Console video game sales have sputtered this year, hit hard by consumers shy to spend, and by competition from casual games on cell phones, tablet computers and within social media sites.Publishers haven't helped either, releasing fewer top-sellers so far this year. But that's expected to change in the next few months as an unusually large slew of potential blockbusters hit store shelves.
"Without any doubt this is going to be one of the biggest holiday seasons in our history for core gaming," said Jesse Divnich, vice president of Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, a video-game-focused market research firm.
Industry Needs Lift: Publishers are hoping so. New sales of video games for consoles such as Microsoft's (MSFT) Xbox 360 and Sony's (SNE) PlayStation 3 slid 34% in August from a year ago to $264.8 million, according to market research firm NPD Group. Overall game sales — including those game titles, the consoles themselves, and peripherals such as controllers — were down 23%, to $669.9 million.
It was the fourth consecutive month of decline for overall hardware and software sales. But August wasn't as bleak as it might appear. EA delayed its perennial fan favorite "Madden NFL" to Aug. 30, thereby punting it into September's NPD data. Last year's version of that football powerhouse title came out in early August and accounted for 28% of new-game software sales that month.
And the slew of big names to come, and the hundreds of millions of dollars in sales they're expected to generate, should help 2011 catch up. Electronic Arts is reporting strong pre-sales of its Middle East-set "Battlefield 3," slated for October. It will square off against the top-selling, first-person-shooter war game franchise of all time, Activision's "Call of Duty" series, due in November. That game, "Modern Warfare 3," pits U.S. and European allies against a Russian onslaught in New York, Paris and London, among other sites.
There's also Sony's "Resistance 3," released earlier this month, Microsoft's "Gears of War 3" due out Sept. 20, and Warner Bros.' "Batman: Arkham City," set for an October release.