September Analyst Predictions

The EEDAR Group’s Jesse Divnich and Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter have both made their predictions for September’s US NPD sales figures, and if they’re correct it will be a very good month for the PS3 Slim.  Both also expect that price cuts for all three home consoles will help to increase sales over those of recent months:

News – June Analyst Predictions

As usual, the EEDAR Groups and Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan have both released their predictions for the June NPD.  These are the figures for June of last year:

June 2008:

• Nintendo DS – 783,000
• Wii – 666,700
• PS3 – 405,500
• PSP – 337,400
• Xbox 360 – 219,000

Software sales in the US totalled $872.6 million in June.

Now for the predictions for this year, which are similar from both groups:

News – May Analyst Predictions

With the May NPD almost upon us, both Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter and the EEDAR Group have made their predictions for the month’s video game hardware sales.  Both remain fairly pessimistic for another month  (no doubt in part because of May being another month of slim software releases), predicting year-on-year declines for all systems.

May 2008′s figures:

• Wii – 675,100
• PS3 – 208,700
• Xbox 360 – 186,600

• DS – 452,600
• PSP – 182,300
• PS2 – 132,700

Software sales in May 2008 totalled $536.9 million.

Analyst Analysis – April ’09

Continuing our analysis of the NPD analysts, we’re going to take a look at the NPD predictions of Wedbush Morgan‘s Michael Pachter and The EEDAR Group for April 2009 and how they match up (or not) with the actual figures.

News – April Analyst Predictions

With the April NPD results just days away (May 14th), both Wedbush Morgan‘s Michael Pachter and the EEDAR Group have made their predictions.  After being overly optimistic in March, both have opted for rather more muted predictions this time, despite Easter falling within April (though without any key software releases to support it).

Michael Pachter:

• Wii – 480,000
• 360 – 275,000
• PS3 – 175,000

Pachter predicts sales will be down year-on-year again, not least because April 2008 saw the release of two of the biggest games of last year, Grand Theft Auto IV and Mario Kart Wii.  He predicts $550 million in total sales, compared to $660 million in April 2008.

EEDAR:

• DS – 950,000
• Wii – 425,000
• 360 – 210,000
• PS3 – 160,000
• PSP – 130,000

Amongst talk of improving their system of “regression calculations” to give more accurate results (which should hopefully avoid miscalculations like March 2009′s), EEDAR also cite the rather empty release schedule as a factor in the relatively low sales.  They predict a similar sales figure to Michael Pachter’s, with sales of $548 million, a 17% decrease.

Sources:

Pachter Predictions – VG247

EEDAR Predictions – GoNintendo

Analyst Analysis

Part of the lead-up to the NPD results each month includes predictions from key analysts in the industry, most notably the EEDAR group and Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan.  As these predictions make news themselves, here at NPD Analysis we thought it might be interesting to see how their predictions are faring so far this year, and see if their predictions really are worth listening to.  As Mr. Pachter only seems to predict figures for the three current-generation home consoles (the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii) only those figures will be discussed.