Activision may be in a spot of trouble with their sales of DJ Hero. According to a variety of our sources, it seems now that DJ Hero is unlikely to achieve the kind of sales that the company had hoped, despite a number of positive previews heading into its release today.

Some analysts are predicting that the sales of DJ Hero could trail as much as 50% less than Activision originally projected. Some suggest that pre-orders lagged behind, but did pick up toward release day. Still, the price seems to be the overriding factor as to why many just are not interested in the release of DJ Hero.

While our sources tell us that that in the end they do expect that DJ Hero will be a successful franchise for Activision, the timing of the release could also be a factor in its anticipated weak sales performance. Too many high-profile titles are crammed closely together for release this holiday selling season, and buyers are making hard choices about which ones they will purchase at this time and in this slow economy.

From the latest that we are hearing, analysts believe that DJ Hero will have a difficult time breaking a million sold in the U.S. before the end of Q4. The revised numbers expect DJ Hero to only move 600,000 total copies, which is down from the 1.6 million copies that were originally projected. This also means that the first-year sales estimate for DJ Hero is likely to be about 950,000, which is significantly less than the 2.5 million units that were anticipated to be sold.

Our retailer sources have confirmed to us that the pre-orders for DJ Hero were much lower than expected, and in turn the retailer we spoke with ordered less than originally projected that they would order. We have to agree that it is likely that DJ Hero will be popular down the line, but it just does not look like it will be popular this time around; we do expect it to pick up some traction as we get closer to the end of the holiday season.