During the early parts of each month, we’ve begun to expect and wait for Michael Pachter’s latest predictions in the world of gaming and the console war. Last month, Pachter misjudged the console sales by a small margin, but that hasn’t stopped him from coming out and proclaiming the same prediction for the month of April. Once again, Pachter is predicting that the PlayStation 3 has outsold the XBOX 360, this time for the month of April. With Grand Theft Auto IV boosting PS3 hardware sales, Pachter feels he should expect nothing less.
“We believe that Nintendo has diverted a significant portion of its available supply to Europe since April 2007, as the weakening dollar has made US sales less profitable for the company… We expect the supply situation will begin to improve over the next several months. We expect a surge in supply in the US for Wii Fit’s May 21 launch here, and believe we could see as many as 900,000 Wii units show up at retail this month (May).
"Console and handheld software sales growth during 2008 (+11 percent in January, +47 percent in February, +63 percent in March) is expected to continue, primarily due to ‘three phenomenal new releases’ in Grand Theft Auto IV, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness and Mario Kart Wii. Pachter predicted monthly software sales of $830 million, up 113 percent on last April’s figures, illustrating that, “thus far in 2008, the sector appears highly recession-resistant.”
For those of you wondering how he feels the sales numbers will stack up, we’ve his predictions below:
Wii: 600,000
PS3: 290,000
Xbox 360: 275,000
PS2: 160,000
DS: 550,000
PSP: 235,000
If you’re interested in investing in the stock market, Pachter has recommended “…investors accumulate Activision, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, THQ, and Ubisoft shares…"
We’ll be sure to update you when the official NPD numbers are released later this week.