Pachter: PS3 will outsell Xbox 360 for July

Mike Bantick
Monday, 20 August 2007 12:23

Your IT - Entertainment

Oft quoted analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan has attempted to predict the official game hardware/software sales for July in North America.  His prediction; Sony PS3 up, Microsoft Xbox 360 down.

Gamasutra has gathered the vocal analysis of Pachter as he tries to one-up the official sales statistics for July, available from NPD this Thursday 23rd August.

"We forecast [game] sales of $425 million, up 12.5% compared to last year’s $378 million... Our estimate reflects $295 million in sales contribution from new platforms (PS3, Wii, 360, PSP and DS) and current generation software sales of $130 million."

Pachter continues: "We estimate sell-through of 330,000 Wii, 115,000 Xbox 360, and 160,000 PS3 hardware systems."

To explain the rise of the PS3 in July: "We expect a bump in PS3 hardware and software sales due to the PS3 price cuts. Sony stated that sales of PS3 approximately doubled after the price cut, with sales before the price cut averaging 20,000 units per week."
 

Not a difficult conclusion to draw given the popularity seen when Sony announced the companies’ flagship device during the month.

Pachter also believes that a decline in perceived Xbox 360 quality over the “red rings of death” will hurt July sales for Microsoft; "We have forecast a month-over-month decline for Xbox 360 hardware sales, due to the warranty issue announced in early July. We believe that the announcement may have disrupted sales for a week or so, as consumers struggled with the meaning of the “three red rings of death” issue. Now that the warranty has been communicated to consumers, the price has been cut, and (it appears) the design flaw that caused the high failure rate has been corrected, we believe sales will rebound."

On the software front; "We expect July sales to be driven by new releases Activision’s Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's (PS2) and Electronic Arts’ NCAA Football 08 (PS2, PS3, Xbox, 360) along with catalog sales of Activision’s Guitar Hero 2 and Nintendo’s Wii Play and Mario Party 8."

Watchers of Pachters predictions will have to wait until Thursday to either poke fun or eat their pre-poked fun words.

[UPDATE] Seems the Danes are already launching into a frenzy of PS3 buying, with some sites mentioning the PS3 outselling the Nintendo Wii 3.5 to 1 and the Xbox 360 a whopping 6 to 1 in Denmark.