Michael Pachter Sales Quotations

We expect a price cut for the PS2 later this year. We believe that Sony will respond to Microsoft's introduction of its next generation console with a cut from $149 to $99 some time before the November 22 Xbox 360 launch, ... We think that Sony has positioned itself to lower price by reducing the production costs of its console when it redesigned the box to a smaller format... Should Sony choose to discount the PS2 to $129 or even $99, we would expect a dramatic lift in PS2 hardware sales, and a corresponding lift in PS2 software sales. Our model forecasts that Sony PS2 hardware sales will be 1.8 million units higher this year compared to last year.

Given continued uncertainty among consumers about the availability of Xbox 360 units, we think that slow sales may persist in December.

We believe that January sales may have been even worse had Microsoft continued its marketing push, and believe that sell through was helped in part by deep discounting of new releases during the month. January marked the fifth consecutive month of software sales decline, and we expect a return to double-digit sales declines in February, with an accelerating rate of decline in March.

We do not believe that recent weakness will persist, and expect a sales rebound in November and December.

The year's a mess. None of us thought six months ago the holidays would be so weak, and no one expected there'd be such a dramatic decline in sales for the current-generation of games.