Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian says DS and Xbox 360 sales grew in the US during April, while sales of all other systems and software declined.

“Following two years of shortages, demand for the Wii has settled to more typical mid-cycle trends, i.e., driven increasingly by the quality of new software releases,” Sebastian wrote in a preview note ahead of the expected release of official NPD sales data on Thursday.

“As such, we expect Wii unit sales to decline again in April data, while the early April launch of the DSi handheld platform will generate solid growth in Nintendo’s handheld business. We expect modest growth in Xbox 360 units and ongoing declines for Sony platforms.

“Our directional estimate for April software sales as reported by NPD is down in the 20 percent range Y/Y on a light release schedule and a very difficult growth comparison from last year, offset in part by the shift of Easter into the month,” he added. “We expect top titles in the month included several Nintendo products (Pokemon, Wii Fit), Godfather 2, and Guitar Hero Metallica.

Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter and EEDAR's Jesse Divnich also recently published their monthly software and hardware sales forecasts for the US games market, which you can read here.