WedbushMorgan
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OnLive 'works on cell phones too,' says Perlman
We've been pretty skeptical of OnLive's many futuristic promises. From streaming every game ever to anything with a decent internet connection, to being able to end world hunger (okay, we made up that second one), it's kind of an enormous leap to be taking from our current standards. In an effort to keep us on our toes, the company just this week announced that not only can the service stream games to households, but also to cell phones. "Today, at a Wedbush financial conference in New York I showed OnLive running simultaneously on two iPhones, a TV, and a computer," said CEO Steve Perlman. "It's important to understand that a cell phone is a very different beast than TV, PC or Mac ... currently, games on OnLive are tuned for TVs and computers, so initially, it's the Community and Social elements of OnLive that we're most excited about on mobile devices." OTOY has already proven that mobile gaming of this level can exist, but we're still not convinced anyone wants to play the full console/PC version of games on their phone. Impressive? Sure. Functional? That has yet to be seen.
THQ's Farrell says company is aiming for core foothold
THQ CEO Brian Farrell believes his company can still gain footing in the core gaming market, focusing on a quality level that "resonates with the consumers and the press." Speaking at the Wedbush Morgan Securities annual conference, attended by Gamasutra, Farrell maintains THQ has continued to strike a chord with the core audience. Saint's Row 2 -- a game Farrell described as "the number-two open-world game in the category" behind Rockstar's GTA -- has "done 2.6 million units life to date." Whether "done" means sold or shipped, is unclear. Farrell also told the audience the Warhammer 40K franchise is one "we should start talking about more." Citing upwards of 4 million units for the original Dawn of War RTS, through initial release to expansion and gold edition. In its first week, Dawn of War 2 jumped to the top of the PC sales charts. Farrell could be accused of shining as might positive light on the current poor situation his company is in. Analysts have predicted the publisher has a 50% chance of bankruptcy since THQ reported a net loss of $191.8 million for the three months ending December 31, 2008, and a loss of 24 percent of its workforce. As for Farrell's comments, it could be said that achieving a quality bar may be difficult when the company has recently decided to axe a large portion of Quality Assurance employees from Volition, the team behind Saint's Row 2. In the streets, we call that irony.
Pachter expects 2008 to be 'significantly better' for Midway
In the wake of yesterday's Q1 earnings announcement from Midway, financial prognosticator Michael Pachter has come forth with his predictions for the company, stating that despite suffering considerable losses during the quarter, the analyst expects the company to perform "significantly better" over the course of year compared to 2007.According to Pachter, his firm, Wedbush Morgan, continues to advise investors to hold onto any shares of Midway stock that they may have collecting dust in their portfolios, adding belief that Midway "can generate sustainable profits if it can deliver revenues above the $300 million annual level." While possible, Pachter himself lowered his 2008 revenue estimates for the company to $265 million from $300 million based on what he called Midway's "weak first half results," as well as lowered his expectations for 2009. The analyst noted belief that Midway hit rock bottom "quite a while ago," and thus it seems like there is nowhere to go but up. We're just not sure that you can get to the top by clinging to Batman's cape.[Via press release]
Pachter: PlayStation 3 will win next-gen war because of Blu-Ray
The most recent Wedbush Morgan report has been released and in it, Michael Pachter states that he believes that Blu-Ray may actually be the deciding factor in the console wars. At the end of the PS3/Wii/360 generation, he expects Sony to 'win' with a 36% market share, largely due to the strong movie industry support of Blu-Ray.Interestingly though, he also states that this console cycle will essentially be "a dead heat, and each manufacturer will have sufficient market share to generate significant profits." This is great news for videogame fans everywhere, since an evenly divided market will mean that each of the consoles will have a chance to grow and mature as they age. This may be PS3 Fanboy, but I really don't want any of the current consoles to pull a Dreamcast.
Sony will never catch up, but that doesn't matter
Chris Kohler's Game | Life blog has a great Q&A session with Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter. When the analyst was asked about the widening gap between DS and PSP, he had this to say: "I don't think Sony will close the gap, and don't think it is important that they do so. Nintendo has over 20 million loyal GBA owners, and we should expect them to dominate the category that they invented. Sony is late to the handheld game, has tried to approach the market from an older demographic, and is just now trying to beef up more kid-friendly content to appeal to 13-17 year olds. I don't think that the gap matters at all, so long as Sony makes money. I also believe that price elasticity of demand dictates that the lower priced product will sell more units. That's why there are more Fords than Maseratis."While Sony will most likely never be number one this generation, they've gone a long way in changing the handheld marketplace. As long as people continue to buy the system and continue to buy the games, the platform will remain more than viable.[Via AMN]
Analysts predict Wii to win in February
It looks like those analyst-type folk over at Wedbush Morgan are thinking the Wii is going to crush much in the way it did during the month of January and we ain't talking orange soda neither. No, we're talking about consoles sold here, ladies and gentleman, and according to these suit-and-tie business types (we're a t-shirt and shorts operation), the Wii is going to sell close to 350,000 units in the U.S. for the month, a total of 150,000 more units than the PS3. As for software, the firm mentions titles such as MLB2K7 and Virtua Fighter 5, which obviously are not available on the Wii. That doesn't rule out the possibility that the console couldn't have a game or two (or three) in the top ten, however.[Via Codename Revolution]
Analyst becomes less bullish for Sony
Wedbush Morgan is one of those places where people sit around in a dark room, pondering the future. They make up numbers that predict future sales, shoot lightning out their hands, and they have three heads. Michael Pachter is one of those men. While he was optimistic for Sony's handheld at the beginning of the year, he seems to be reconsidering his position: "We are lowering ... our forecast for PSP sales from 8.5 million to 7.4 million, and increasing our expectation for DS sales from 6.5 million to 8 million."This isn't really too bad: even if PSP isn't number one in sales, it still has done much better than any non-Nintendo gaming handheld in the past. Regardless, the analyst had tons of good things to say about Nintendo, and not so much about Sony: he decreased his 2006 PS3 hardware sales estimate by 1 million units (to 3 million) and increased his 2006 Wii hardware sales by 500,000 to (4 million). Of course, it's not just the analyst that sees good things for Nintendo: the shareholders do as well.[News via Gamespot][Sales chart for US. DS has a few weeks extra data due to an earlier launch. Via VG Charts]
GTA:LCS PS2 coming 6/6/06 for $20
Just as we reported, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for the PS2 has been delayed. Apparently the game will debut on June 6th at a RRP of US$19.99/€29.99/£19.99. The game was originally scheduled to be released on April 24th at $29.99.On the surface the reduced price looks like an attempt to appease impatient gamers. Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter thinks that it goes deeper than that: "we believe that the lower than expected price point for GTA LCS implies that the game is a straight port from the PSP, with few (if any) enhancements to graphics or game play" and that "although we believe that the game will sell a greater number of units at a higher [sic] (we think he meant lower) price point, we think that overall sales may suffer if the game is not sufficiently different from the PSP version." As it is, Wedbush Morgan thinks that Take Two could sell "3 million units at $16 (for total revenues of $48 million) instead of 1.9 million at $28 in our model (total revenues of $53 million)", which mean the delay might cost Take Two $5 million. Ouch.Of course, there's still the possibility that Morgan is underestimating the game's sale figures: they predicted that T2 would sell 900,000 copies of Elder Scrolls in the time immediately after its release, when in fact Take Two recently announced that they've sold 1.7 million units.
