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Top Players: Video Game Sales Predictions for the 2014 Holidays

New releases of "Halo," "Assassin's Creed" and "World of Warcraft" will be available to consumers ahead of the 2014 holiday season.
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It's a big week for video games. New releases of "Halo," "Assassin's Creed" and "World of Warcraft" will be available to consumers ahead of the 2014 holiday season.

Sales are looking promising, but video game analyst Michael Pachter, of Wedbush Securities, predicts that the combined sales of the three games will not approach the 2013 best-seller "Grand Theft Auto V," which sold 32 million units.

"These games are very solid performers," Pachter said. "Gamers get a lot of choice this week."

"Halo: The Master Chief Collection," released Tuesday, is a compilation of the four existing "Halo" games, including all of the extra content. The new Microsoft game sells for $60, making it the one of the best-valued games released this fall, but it is only offered for the newly released Xbox One, a factor that will potentially diminish overall sales.

Also on Tuesday, video game developer Ubisoft released two new iterations of "Assassin's Creed," the historical action-adventure video game. "Assassin's Creed Unity" is a team-based game, allowing up to four players. The multiplayer option is only available on the new console. The single-player campaign of the new release, "Assassin's Creed Rogue," provides a similar experience to the last several years.

Splitting the release into two separate games may limit sales, Pachter says, predicting that the combined sales will fall short of last year's "Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag," which sold 12 million units. But the games will still see strong sales because they have the ability to reach the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles, he said.

"World of Warcraft," the 10-year-old massively multiplayer online role-playing game, will release the fifth expansion pack for the game Wednesday. Consumers will have to purchase "Warlords of Draenor" in order to level up to get more powers and weapons. Only available to subscribers of "World of Warcraft," expansion packs tend to attach at an 85-95 percent rate.