AAA's strength shown in lack of EA Sports decline: analyst

The notion that AAA gaming's had its day is bunk, Doug Creutz of Cowen & Company has said in a note.

"We expect [EA's] annual college football title to sell roughly flat with last year's total of 798,000 units," said Creutz of NCAA Football 13, as reported by GamesIndustry.

"We believe this is an important contraindicator to the prevailing thesis that 'AAA is dead'; we believe that if demand for high-quality AAA games was truly on the wane, it would almost certainly show up in EA's annual sports titles."

Doom and gloom surrounding the traditional industry appears to be coming from the decline in packaged goods.

"We believe double digit year-on-year software declines are likely to continue through the remainder of the year due to continued Wii weakness and the waning 360/PS3 cycle, though we do expect the pace of declines to moderate somewhat in Q4 with the fall release slate, the launch of the Wii U, and relatively easier comps," Creutz added.

"We project that total US packaged good video game sales will decline 26% year-on-year in 2012."