mrstickball on 12 March 2007
Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter has predicted a 20 percent rise in game sales for February's upcoming NPD U.S. charts to $415 million, on continued strong sales of Guitar Hero II as well as MLB 2K7, Virtua Fighter 5, and Crackdown.
Ahead of NPD's results expected March 15th, Pachter says $240 million of the sales figures will be contributed by new platforms (PS3, Wii, 360, PSP and DS), showing a 141 percent rise over 2006, with current generation software sales falling 29 percent to $175 million.
Pachter has also predicted the Wii will once again outsell the PlayStation 3, with 350,000 units predicted for Nintendo's console and 200,000 units for Sony's own. The PlayStation 2, however, will likely see continued strong software sales, says Pachter, of as much as $120 million, reflecting only "modest year-over-year declines (approximately 20%) for the first half of 2007."
Pachter expects that PS3 sales will stabilize at 50,000 units per week "now that consumers are aware of the supply situation (we have seen modest advertising recently)," which might increase as more game titles are delivered. He also has good hopes for Blu-ray content to drive hardware sales, especially with November's release of Spider-Man 3: The Movie.
Also noted is that estimates include $70 million in software sales for the PS3 and Wii alone, based on a tie ration of 2.4 units per each system, compared to last month's 2.2 for the Wii and 2.7 for the PS3.
The software sales will be driven, says Pachter by Guitar Hero II and other continued holiday hits, as well as top February releases including MLB 2K7, Virtua Fighter 5, Crackdown, and The Sims 2: Seasons. Though just five titles sold more than 100k units in February of 2006, Pachter says he expects seven to do so this month, down slightly from 10 in January.
Pachter concludes by saying that he expects the December quarter results and strong holiday and January sales to continue through the March quarter, with recent weakness in publisher stocks due to uncertainty more than performance, as well as anecdotal evidence of poor PS3 hardware sales, and adds that "investors should remain comfortable owning video game publisher stocks."
POSTED: 07.43AM PST, 03/12/07 - Brandon Boyer - LINK
Patcher is the dumbest guy to be an analyist. However, WM does get info from NPD a bit sooner.
It places Wii @ 350k, and PS3 @ 200k. It also has Guitar Hero, Crackdown, MLB2k7, and VF5 for 100k sellers. There's no mention of Zelda: TP, Gears of War, Wii Play, Sonic & The Secret Rings, or SSX Blur. Also dissapointing is the 2.4 tier ratio for the Wii/PS3. IMO thats still horrible. The 360 is @ 5.0 right now, and in Feb. last year, it was still at 4.0~4.5.
Providing the numbers are right, that'd put the 360 at around 265~270,000, as the PS3 and Wii are following January trends minus 20% for the 1 less week. Software sales seem to be severely lacking, except for GH2 and Crackdown, which should do well.
Strange times indeed. Febuary should be very somber for all the software sales. It's absolutely no suprise that the Wii did around 350k (supposedly), as that'd show that Nintendo can ship around 85k units to the US per week (compared to 60-70k to Japan)
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
