There might be talks of recession in the air but that has not deterred gamers from going out there and buying consoles and video game titles. Once again, Michael Pachter, the analyst from Wedbush Morgan has come out with his predictions, just before the NPD data is released. He points out that the Sony PS3 has outperformed the Xbox 360.
The analyst pegged the sales of the PlayStation 3 consoles to 365, 000 units, which is more compared to the sales of Microsoft’s next generation console, which he predicted would stand at some 310,000. Pachter was all praise for the Nintendo Wii and stated that Nintendo will be at the top yet again as the sales of the console would be some 700, 000 units in the five-week retail period for March 2008. He pointed out that the number is not proportionate to February’s 432,000 units as Nintendo chose to ship to the US its fair share.
Michael Pachter explained, “Since April 2007, Nintendo has manufactured 1.8 million Wiis per month, implying that US share should be somewhere between 720,000 to 900,000 units per month (40 to 50 percent of total units produced). We believe that Nintendo has diverted a major portion of its available supply to Europe since April, as the weakening dollar has made US sales less profitable for the company. However, we believe that European supply has caught up with demand, and think that the company likely shipped the US its ‘fair share’ in the month of March, mainly in light of Nintendo’s need to support the launch of Super Smash Brothers Brawl.”
The Wedbush Morgan analyst believes that the console software sales will go up to some 850 million dollars, which means that there is a forty seven percent rise at United States retail. He named Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Army of Two, Major League Baseball 2K8 along with Wii Play, GH III, Rock Band among the top sellers. As for Super Smash Bros. Brawl from Nintendo Wii, he predicted that it would be the top game in March after selling more than 1.4 million units in the first week itself in the US.