http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=110928

Analyst: Nintendo's third parties need not worry

Contrary to a prior analysis by Kaufman Bros. Equity Research, Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter believes that third party publishers have absolutely nothing to worry about when it comes to making their fair share of money with Nintendo platforms.

By Eugene Huang

Last week, GamePro presented the results of a report compiled by Kaufman Bros. Equity Research analyst Todd Mitchell, who believes that Nintendo's unrivaled success with first party games may cut sharply into the market of third party publishers. Since then, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has spoken out in opposition to this report, even going so far as calling Mitchell's initial analysis "naive".

In a conversation with Gamesindustry.biz, Pachter was quick to denounce Mitchell's analysis as "incomplete", stating:

"His conclusion is that Nintendo's success on the GameCube and GBA will translate to future success on the DS and Wii, so he's basing his opinion on a view that Nintendo will capture somewhere around 30 per cent market share on each of its new consoles."

But, whereas Nintendo's first party lineup held a 30% market share with the GBA and GameCube, Pachter predicts that that figure may shrink to around 20% in this current console cycle due to increased third party interest in Wii and DS development.

"If consumers have a choice of all games on the Wii and DS, and Nintendo's offering remains constant, Nintendo must lose share," he adds. "That is a good thing for the third party publishers."

Pachter also made special note of the behavior of such publishers as EA and Ubisoft, which largely ignored developing for the GameCube and GBA. Pachter claims that they have since changed their tune and are now "laser focused on growing market share on both the DS and Wii platforms".

In particular, Pachter believes that EA will offer 15 individual titles for each Nintendo platform annually, when taking into consideration the fact that development for either the DS and Wii is "not particularly complex".

Well I must agree but mostley I think patcher is an idiot

well he's an analyst, of course he's an idiot. However, even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day. Sometimes I wonder why these analysts get jobs. Honestly, every analyst who says something, we have another analyst who says the opposite. What do we gain by having them? It's not like you can take anything they say seriously since they're always disagreeing with each other. Honestly, I think I'd take Hus's word over any analyst. Ok maybe not Hus...