Following our breaking news on the amazing sales the U.S. video game industry had this September, Wedbush Morgan Securities (WMS) has chimed in with its own report on the data.

Similar to NPD analyst Anita Frazier, WMS analyst Michael Pachter was impressed by the software sales for both the current and next-gen platforms. It would appear that the effects of the console transition really haven't been that terrible. "It appears that the recent sales strength on current generation platforms is sustainable, given strong sell-through performance over the last several months. Consumers appear willing to purchase compelling content for current generation consoles in spite of the imminent launches of the PS3 and Wii, and have embraced software for the DS and PSP, driving monthly sales higher," he noted.

While the PS2 continues to perform admirably—software sales are up 12 percent year-over-year and September marked the fourth consecutive month that sell-through of PS2 software was up—Microsoft's original Xbox seems to be fading away in the presence of the 360. "It is important to note that Xbox software sales were down 57%, as the console has been all but abandoned in favor of the next generation Xbox 360," Pachter stated. "While we expect to see further declines in Xbox software sales throughout 2007, the platform contributed less than 25% of the amount contributed by PS2 software sales during September, so further declines will not be particularly meaningful to the overall sales results."

The Xbox 360, on the other hand, surprised Pachter. "In particular, sales of Xbox 360 software were better than we expected, increasing to $104 million from $89 million in August. We had expected Xbox 360 software sales to contribute $50 - 70 million per month until October (when a strong lineup is scheduled for release), and the strength over the past four months suggests to us that contribution may continue at the $100 million level in October, with significantly higher sales in November and December," he said.

Deutsche Bank analyst Jeetil Patel looks at the 360 business in a different light, instead focusing on the hardware which seems to be underperforming. "260K hardware units were sold in Sep-06, which is an improvement from Aug-06 (200K). However the Xbox 360's installed base is still smaller than the original Xbox's equivalent after the same number of months of sell-through. Xbox 360 sales are even more lackluster if you consider that the original was an unproven product that was trying to sell-in against the hugely popular PS2," commented Patel. "Finally we highlight that the gap between Xbox 360 and PS2 hardware sales at equivalent time periods in their lives continues to widen. In 2001, the PS2 was consistently selling-through >300K units a month, whereas the Xbox 360 has not broken 300K since its launch in November."

[UPDATE] Regarding the original Xbox, a Microsoft spokesperson told GameDaily BIZ, "Xbox (V1) is a robust platform with more than 24 million units in living rooms worldwide with a portfolio of over 800 games. Microsoft will continue to support V1 Xbox hardware units, our Xbox Live service and general game issues." The representative added that while third parties continue to support Xbox, Microsoft Game Studios has no titles planned for the platform at this time.