New analyst estimates reveal the sales of Gears of War: Judgment and God of War: Ascension won't meet expectations, and will result in another down month for the industry.

Analytics company Cowen & Company released an investor note, which was uncovered by Games Industry, and included U.S. sales estimates for both Gears of War: Judgment and God of War: Ascension. The company believes Judgment will have sold roughly 425,000 copies in the month of March. Compared to Gears of War 3, which sold more than 2 millions copies during its first month, it would appear the fourth entry in the series did not live up to expectations.

The same could be said of Ascension, the fourth God of War console game. The sequel is believed to have sold roughly 360,000 units in March, which puts it far behind the 1.1 million copy pace set by God of War 3 in 2010.  "We had expected sales trends to improve in March due to a strong core line-up," Cohen & Company said in the statement. "Two historically strong franchises appear to have significantly underperformed."

The group expects the NPD sales figures to come in at a fairly substantial loss early in the 2013 calendar. Based just on the lackluster performance of these two games, March is on track to fall 21 percent below the same time as last year. That's also including Cohen's estimates of Tomb Raider's 696,000 copies (over 33 days), and BioShock Infinite's 665,000 copies (over 10 days), in the U.S.

In a month when analysts expected the industry to recover slightly from the dismal 2012, that such a large quantity of major releases couldn't make an impact is troubling. How the rest of the year will fare will the expected releases of the PlayStation 4 and next generation Xbox remains to be seen, but hopefully things will turn around swiftly. Otherwise we may be on track for even more studio closures and layoffs before the end of the 2013 fiscal year.

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