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According to analysts from EEDAR, Wedbush Morgan and Screen Digest, games like Midnight Club: Los Angeles, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe and Animal Crossing: Let's Go To The City could have less than merry Christmases. Gamasutra reports these are just a few of the marquee and triple-A titles that, for various reasons, could get lost in the pre-holiday game release dust up.
With Nintendo DS sales slowing in Japan, could Nintendo have a successor waiting in the wings? Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter think so, telling investors in a note that Nintendo "has a new handheld device ready for launch in [Japan] before the end of the calendar year", according to a report from Edge Online.
In fact, it's those cooling hardware sales on the DS that may force Nintendo to react, making an end-of-year announcement more likely, Pachter writes. The DS has been regularly outsold by the PSP for the past few months in Japan, with marquee software releases doing little to boost matching hardware sales.
Add Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter (and possibly a few of his less famous co-workers) to the list of folks who believe that Nintendo has not yet shrugged off the "core" gamer. According to a report from Gamasutra, Pachter has weighed in on Nintendo's E3 showing, saying "We think that Nintendo focused upon building upon its formidable lead with the mass market, and do not consider the lack of major hard core game announcements to be an abandonment of its core".
The "core" may still be hanging its head, waking up in cold sweats to the sound of Wii Music clanging through their heads, but that doesn't mean Nintendo isn't doing spectacularly on the financial side.
Pachter figures that the Big N will pull in some $US 3.9 billion for the quarter, adding up to a $US 17.7 billion take for the entire year. If Nintendo has indeed abandoned the core, who could blame 'em? That's "fuck you" money, right there.
Pachter: Nintendo To Report $US 3.91b In Q1 Sales, Hasn't Abandoned Core [Gamasutra]
Alright, alright, forgive the distortion, but if you've bought a next-gen console -- and worldwide, more than 60 million of us have -- then you are "wealthy or hardcore gamers", according to everyone's favourite video game software analyst, Michael Pachter. I don't consider myself hardcore. And my aforementioned $AU 1562.4 rent apparently qualifies me as wealthy.
Pachter's reasoning, in comments to GamePro, is that the next-gen consoles are not truly mass-market items yet, and won't be until their price point dips to $AU 207.28.
I know, we don't run many of these predictions anymore, but I've an inkling this one's on the money, so up it goes. Analyst Michael Pachter has rolled the goat's bones, read the tea leaves and predicted that while software sales for May were strong, hardware sales were not. Even though they were supposed to be, with both Microsoft and Sony hoping/expecting a big sales boost in the wake of GTA IV's release. He cites some simExchange and VGChartz numbers in his figures, which as guesstimates aren't as rock-solid as we can hope for, but since the real NPD numbers won't be with us til later in the week, guesstimates are all we've got. Make do.
The Financial Times/StarMine recently awarded Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter the designation of number one Earnings Estimator for the Software sector. As Pachter said, "Please note that there is no 'video games industry' and that my performance is compared to the analysts who cover not only video games, but those who cover other software, such as Microsoft, Oracle, and other such companies."
You may recall our Very Special Kotaku Feature earlier this year titled "Analysing the Analysts," in which tireless former Kotaku intern Tori Floyd weighed game industry analysts against one another. The result? Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter scored the highest among his peers in terms of how often he was correct. Yeah, we totally called it.
In an email sent to the press titled "Some Tireless Self-Promotion," Pachter discussed the award:
Analyst Michael Pachter expects a $US 50 price drop will be hitting both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 this holiday, but that it will still be hard for the industry to match last year's extraordinary holiday sales.
Speaking at the Electronic Gaming Summit this afternoon, Pachter said that he expects an overall slowdown in video game sales over the next three years.
Pachter expects the industry to see 19 percent growth in the U.S. and 20 percent in Europe this year, with his predicted price drop this holiday. Next year, Pachter expects growth to dip to 16 and 18 percent, unless the consoles drop another $US 100, which would add another five percent to growth. In 2010 growth will slow to 10 percent and seven percent, unless consoles drop in price by $US 150, Pachter said.
By the year 2011 Pachter predicts that the industry will flatline unless a new console is introduced.
Wait. That means that game sales will flatten out after six years unless we get a new console. There goes Microsoft's hopes for a seven year console and Sony's plans for a ten year one.
We're perpetually interested in the three-way. Because the Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony multi-billion dollar pillow fight that is the console wars makes for interesting news and highly combustible fanboy fuel. But analyst Michael Pachter feels that Microsoft shouldn't pay so much attention.
"I personally think that, with a lot of respect for the Microsoft guys...I think they're foolish to even worry about who's first and who's second. I think that's just stupid.Stupid?? But I only own a 360 and my street cred is fast-approaching the drain!
Wedbush Morgan's gaming guru Michael Pachter sees big things for Nintendo's Wii Fit in North America, where the combination personal trainer and balance board are slated for a May 19th release. The analyst predicts the package could sell upwards of 4 million units if Nintendo does it up right.
"I really don't know what the spend will be, but it could be 10 - 12% of projected sales. If we assume a retail price of $US 100, that's $US 10 million in marketing for each 1 million units sold. If they go mainstream (have Oprah demo the device), I could see them selling 3 - 4 million, maybe more. That suggests the potential for $US 30 - 40 million in marketing.]
Wedbush Morgan analyst and Kotaku reader idol Michael Pachter went on record with the Dallas News with his theory on one reason it's still so damn hard to find a Wii. The United States dollar, he's paraphrased as saying, is so limp, that Nintendo is shipping excess consoles to Europe to meet demand there, squeezing out a bit of extra profit when all is said and done. It's not like Nintendo is completely abandoning American gamers—it sold 432,000 Wiis in February—it may just be allocating stock to its first class customer base.
