Pachter: Software Sales Up in March, Poor Wii U Sales - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 16 April 2013 / 7,554 Views
Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter has released his estimates for the video game industry in the US in March. He focused on the poor Wii U sales which he expects to have only sold 55,000 units. This would be a 17 percent drop when compared to February. Pachter expects the Wii U to continue selling poorly even if it receives a price cut.
Pachter expects software sales to up one percent year-over-year, due to the strong release schedule. Gears of War: Judgment, God of War: Ascension, BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider were all released in March.
"The only key hardware device to underperform our expectations was the Wii U and its fortunes appear unlikely to improve for several months, even if Nintendo decides to drop price, as there are an insufficient number of core titles that are generating interest in the console," said Pachter.
We think that core gamers are far more likely to turn their attention to the PS4 (due in the holiday season) and the next Xbox, which we believe will be unveiled before E3 and have a launch alongside that of the PS4, and believe that the long-term appeal of the Wii U will be severely limited by the perception that the PS4 and next Xbox will be much more powerful with greater online integration and multimedia functionality."
Pachter believes that if the PlayStation 4 and next Xbox are priced reasonably at launch, that Wii U sales will not improve due to strong the competition. He believes that Microsoft will sell the next Xbox with a payment plan like it is currently testing out with the Xbox 360 and similar to what cell phone providers do. Sell the device at a loss, but have consumers sign up for a two year plan which will more than make up for the loss. Pachter also believes that Sony will use the exact same strategy with the PlayStation 4.
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What else is new with Pachter and Nintendo?
Pachter is always wrong. So Wii U will be the greatest success of all time? By the way, he said similar about for the Wii in 2006. He just don't like Nintendo because Nintendo proves his predictions always wrong.
He was wrong again, thank you for you propaganda Patch adams
Why does he still have a job?
Newsflash....Pachter is a poor excuse for an analyst.
On something unrelated to the Wii U doom sensationalism: I think he's right that Sony should / will offer the sell cheap and 2yr PSN+ subscription option as well as pay full price up front. It makes sense and I said Sony should have done this with PS3 right from the start, even before MS had the bright idea.
Um... two things... he's just stating the obvious. Why does he get payed for stating the obvious and what anybody can see? And second and a little bit on the same subject, why does he get hate from stating the obvious? Is like if I say: "The Ocean is blue"... I mean, you should be more like... "No shit Sherlock" and that should be it...
I hate to break the news but the only proof we have that WiiU sales are up is VGChartz and based on the site track record of WiiU sales I wouldn't bet the bank on those numbers being anywhere close to reality...
Going by VGC numbers Wii U should do 70k in the US alone in March...
55k, 70k; it's all the same - dire sales.
Why would he have higher expectations for the wiiu if there are no 'core' titles.
LOL, it's the beginning of April and the Wii U sales have already started going upwards, while his precious PS Vita has started going downwards. This guy is way too old to rely on his own taste for being a gaming analyst. He needs to actually study the gaming industry to know what we gamers under 30 want.
Th wii u is overpriced, has no good exclusives, the hardware is not next gen and the online is terrible, what did Nintendo expect?
