With an official count of 1.23 million units sold in the UK on launch day, Modern Warfare 2 is well on track to become this year’s biggest entertainment launch, just as publisher Activision said it would.

How is the proper sequel to 2007’s Infinity Ward-developed Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare stacking up in terms of worldwide sales? While exact figures are still unknown, Broadpoint AmTech analyst Ben Schachter surmises that 7 million copies went into the hands of gamers worldwide on day one.

It’s a lofty prediction, but very possible, taking the buzz surrounding this launch into consideration. If true, it’d mean that MW2 nearly doubled the units GTA IV sold on its first day. Quite an impressive feat.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Sold an Estimated 7 Million Copies Day One, says Analyst [GameDaily]

Analyst: Modern Warfare 2 Sold 7 Million On Day One - [eXophase.com]

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has already voiced his concerns over the need of a Wii price cut, and there’s good reason to believe that Nintendo will be taking that advice to heart if U.S. sales predictions for September are on the mark.

With total unit sales 50 percent lower than last year, Pachter expects Wii sales to take another hit in September, which would translate to a sixth consecutive month of decline. How significant of a dropoff that may be is anyone’s guess – and it may not happen in the unlikely event that sales pick up. However, with August NPD figures inching closer to the sub-250K mark, Nintendo may want to take proactive action on this one.

US Wii sales set for sixth month of decline [GI.biz]

Pachter: Wii September Performance Not Looking Up, Price Cut Needed To Stay Competitive - [eXophase.com]

NPD numbers for August are in and there’s no real surprises here. Overall revenue took a significant dip from last year’s results — down from $1.09 billion to $908 million — marking the sixth consecutive month in sales decline.

No real shakeups in the hardware sector came about in August, aside from the fact that PS3 sales climbed to 210,000, likely due to the $100 price cut that went into effect during the latter half of the month. Despite this, Microsoft still edged past Sony, selling 215,400 Xbox 360 units. It’s safe to say we won’t see the true impact of this price cut until September data is released, seeing as that’s when the PS3 Slim model officially hit retail channels, alongside marketing campaigns aimed heavily at the mainstream consumer.

See the complete breakdown of software and hardware sales past the jump.

Speaking in a keynote at GDC Europe, Crytek co-founder Cevat Yerli said that he expects the next-generation of consoles to hit in 2013 at the latest. However, Yerli is not standing by his statement entirely, noting that “there’s a big debate about whether there will be a next generation at all.”

With both Sony and Microsoft taking bold initiatives towards introducing motion-sensing peripherals, it’s quite plausible that this generation could carry on for another three years. After all, there’s not much point in coming out with new tech if the current crop of consoles are soon to be phased out. It’s very possible we may see a “refresh” of this gen, similar to what Nintendo and Sony have done in the portable sector with the DSi and now PSPgo.

Crytek is working on CryEngine 3-powered Crysis 2, scheduled to hit PS3, Xbox 360, and PC at a yet-unspecified date.

GDC Europe: Crytek’s Yerli On The Future Of Gaming Graphics [Gamasutra]

Crytek: Current Gen To Last Until 2013 - [eXophase.com]

The NPD figures for July are in and for the fifth consecutive month, once again show a year-over-year decline in industry sales. The results are far from uplifting, as total dollars generated throughout last month missed the $1 billion mark, clocking at a $848,000, a 29 percent decline.

The PS3 barely edged pasted its last-generation counterpart in sales, with both platforms shifting 121,800 and 108,000 units respectively. It’s safe to say that Sony needs that price cut, pronto. Xbox 360 sales weren’t as bleak, but still took a dive compared to last month with 202,900 units sold.

Wii Sports Resort, perhaps unsurprisingly, took the crown for July’s best-selling title. Released near the tail end of the month, it sold 508,200 copies.

See the full breakdown of July figures past the break, courtesy of NPD.

If you are not familiar with The Nielsen Company, they collect and aggregate consumer data primarily from digital media and analyze it. In a recent publication dubbed, "Hottest June on Record for Video Games," it was outlined that over the past six months the Xbox 360 was the most active console in terms of percentage of users. Between January and June 2009, the Xbox 360 netted between 11 and 12% during any given Nielsen-metered minute.

The other notable stat given was that the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 are essentially tied at the top of the Minutes Played category. The average gamer logged 768 minutes of play during this past June and the PS2 and 360 combined for just under 50% of the total time played between themselves versus the rest of the field. (The rest of the field being the PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Gamecube, and the Original Xbox.)

For some other stats listed in the study, follow the break:

id Software technical director and Doom creator John Carmack believes Sony will be the first to kick off the next wave of consoles with a successor to PS3, tentatively referred to as PS4.

Whether Sony wants to jump the gun to prevent the same sort of 360 lag from happening to them again seems likely.

As developers, we would really like to see this generation stretch as long as possible. We’d like to see it be quite a few more years before the next-gen consoles comes out, but I suspect one will end up shipping something earlier rather than later.

Further to this, Carmack mentioned there is a “decent” chance that one of the next-generation platforms will ship without support for optical media, as Sony has already done with the UMD-less PSPgo. Three years ago, such a scenario would be viewed as unrealistic, but today it’s not exactly far-fetched when taking the rapid growth of digital-based distribution services into account.

Carmack: PS4 will be first to market [MCVUK]

Carmack: Sony Will Enter Next-Gen Market First With PS4 - [eXophase.com]

Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata feels confident his company will lay the smackdown on the competition for fiscal 2009-2010, projecting an upwards of 10 million in unit sales for Wii titles Wii Sports Resort, New Super Mario Bros Wii and Wii Fit Plus.

A realistic expectation? If it were anyone else we’d say no, but taking the sheer popularity of Mario coupled with a booming fitness genre, as evidenced by sales of the original Wii Sports, it seems very possible that each of these titles will hit the 10 million mark sometime in 2010.

Speaking in regards to the forecasted numbers, Iwata said, “We recognise this Q1 result is not the strongest and closer to the lower parameters of our expectations, but we expect we can reverse the situation through the full-fiscal year and therefore did not revise out forecast.”

Nintendo clearly isn’t letting the slow economy get in their way.

Iwata: A Trio Of Wii Titles Have Potential To Sell 10 Million This Year - [eXophase.com]

NPD numbers for June are in, painting a somber picture. Although up from the always-sluggish month of May, sales were down 31 percent compared to last year’s figures.

On a year-over-year basis, all platforms incurred a hit in unit sales over last June with the exception of Xbox 360. Despite this, Nintendo still dominated the charts, shifting a combined total of 766,500 DS and DSi systems, in addition to a respectable 361,700 Wii units.

While sales took a considerable dive over the previous year, by and large the hardware landscape remained the same as previous months, with Nintendo leading and Sony still riding in the backseat at third place.

On the software side of the spectrum, Prototype on Xbox 360 shifted 419,000 units in June, pulling ahead of both UFC 2009 and EA Sports Active. Interestingly, the PS3 edition of Prototype fell short of making the top ten. See the full breakdown of numbers after the break.

No matter how you shake it, the asking price of $249 for the recently announced PSPgo is a wee bit on the high side. Outspoken analyst Michael Pachter agrees, going as far to label the device as a rip-off. Pachter surmises that despite the inclusion of built-in 16GB flash storage, doing away with an expensive UMD drive means Sony will be making a healthy profit on each unit sold.

$249 is too much. Period… The [current] $169 PSP-3000 is a profitable device – the disc assembly, for a UMD, costs more than 16 gigs of flash does. So this new device doesn’t cost them as much to make as the PSP-3000 and they jack the price up $80…

I’m sorry to say it. I don’t want to get bad fan mail from the Sony fanboys, but… They’re ripping off the consumer until they sell a couple million and if consumers don’t buy it then the price is going to come down… they’re making a lot more money on the PSP Go than the PSP-3000. And the PSP Go helps them because there’s no piracy…

Pachter brings up a fair point. Although we were extremely impressed with the PSPgo at E3, both from an aesthetic and functional standpoint, dropping down what amounts to more than half the price of a PS3 is a hard pill to swallow. Regardless, it’s hard to complain, as Sony is giving consumers a choice between the 3000 and go. Being an early adopter is never easy.

Pachter says Sony is ‘ripping off’ consumers with PSP Go [Joystiq]