Colin Sebastian: November game sales to climb 25%

After predictions poured in from Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter and virtual market arena simExchange, Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets stepped up to the plate to bat out his expectations for the initial holiday season sales performance. Games to lead the Yuletide purchase rush, as well as optimistic outlooks for all three console manufacturers are in the full story.

Lazard Capital Markets‘ Colin Sebastian expects game sales to hike up 20-25% for the month of November as holiday shopping season breezes by before its peak in December. Though the analyst picked out several titles as key sales champs for Yuletide 2007, Sebastian believes that Nintendo Wii titles will prove a major player in the increase of software SKU sales.

Call of Duty IV and Guitar Hero III from Activision, Super Mario Galaxy from Nintendo, Assassin’s Creed from Ubisoft Montreal, and Mass Effect from Microsoft are included in the analyst’s titles to top the Christmas sales rush. Sebastian believes that all three platforms will gain something out of this year’s holiday shopping season, though he reinforces collected expectations that Nintendo is to lead the console race by the end of 2007.

While the Nintendo Wii is expected to wade in shortages this Christmas into early 2008, the Microsoft Xbox 360 and the Sony PlayStation 3 will likely take advantage of the shopping frenzy and propel their sales numbers forward as the next-generation console race surges on.

If these predictions are accurate, they’re likely to reflect in the NPD’s reports for November arriving tomorrow.