The games industry and entrenched gamers alike await the NPD Group's sales report for the month of July later this week in order to find out who's hot and who's not. Analysts are also doing their thing, and Nintendo's Wii remains a subject of their estimation. While they are expecting a decline in Wii sales for July, analysts believe things will pick up sharply for Nintendo later this Fall, and beyond. Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian for example sees July as Nintendo's "hardware calm before the storm".

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter also believes the Wii hype will remain strong this year, leading to higher-than-ever monthly sales. His reasoning lies in an expected increase in allocation of Wii hardware to North America for once, after Nintendo prioritized Europe to benefit from the stronger local currency. If the company's global Wii sales target for the rest of its fiscal year remains at 25 million units, then Pachter estimates July's North American shipment should have been around 2.4 million consoles. Thus far Nintendo has prepared about a third of its monthly production for the whole of North America, but this situation could change as the American dollar slightly improves.

Nintendo may ease the Wii shortages which have plagued North America, and consequently domestic hardware sales could leap. Assuming that the Wii is selling somewhere around 650,000 units come July as predicted by Pachter, monthly console sales could stand to increase to almost one million units starting this month. If not by August, then certainly by the 2008 holiday shopping season:

We expect the monthly figure to increase once the company is able to deploy its recent production increase to the U.S., and we expect monthly sell-through to increase by as many as 300,000 units per month, beginning in August.

Meanwhile, Pachter believes Microsoft could do better to win consumers to the Xbox 360 than simply bumping up the console's hard drive storage. What's needed is an actual price cut for the 360, and not just for ones which are intended to be phased out at retail.

"At the end of the day, there are more consumers on the sidelines who will be influenced by pricing than by features and functionality, and we think that Microsoft should seize the opportunity to again gain a sales lead over Sony by cutting price below $300 permanently."

Microsoft recently announced a new 60GB Xbox 360 which would replace the current 20GB "Premium" consoles. Pricing for the upcoming model is currently $349.99 USD, which what the 20GB model used to be go for at retail before dropping in price to $299.99 USD while "supplies last". The new 60GB console had no set street date; according to Xbox Live's Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb, the 60GB 360 will "just appear in the retail channels". Heck, it's already out in the wild!