Analysts, the next-gen, and the Holiday season
Gamasutra has a feature out showcasing the analysts’ take on how the console wars will turn out this holiday season.
We know you guys are probably sick and tired reading about analysts and their take on what will happen to consoles. You know the drill. They say that console A won’t meet numbers. They say this will win over that. They say that the console B can cause so much fun that due to the excessive amounts of peace, love, and joy, an inter-dimensional portal will open summoning the evil robotic Santa Claus from Invader Zim… or something like that.
Anyway, here’s some of the more pertinent bits of what the holiday console picture as they see it.
Some of these were quick to point out which hot games we should be looking out to get as gifts:
Anita Frazier, The NPD Group – Zelda! The game with the highest degree of anticipation appears to be The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Other titles I expect to finish well for the holiday season are Call of Duty 3, Final Fantasy XII, and Gears of War.
The industry is up 12% so far this year, and I think there is nothing but good news ahead as we finish out 2006. We should comfortably achieve record-breaking revenues this year.
Michael Pachter, Wedbush Morgan Securities – A huge hit this season will be Guitar Hero II, which I expect to be in scarce supply due to manufacturing constraints for the guitars. (The interesting metric will be how many PS2s are sold to old guys like me who just want that game.)
Some pointed out the holiday console cash-cows:
Ben Bajarin, Creative Strategies – On the PS3, Resistance: Fall of Man will be a driver. On the Xbox 360, Gears of War will be a holiday driver. On the Wii, look for games that really take advantage of the console’s unique capabilities.
Good to see Resistance getting the mention, since online sentiment regarding the depth of the PS3 launch list has been pretty negative in some parts of the world-wide-intarwebs.
Get the rest of this article after the Jump!
Gamasutra has a feature out showcasing the analysts’ take on how the console wars will turn out this holiday season.
We know you guys are probably sick and tired reading about analysts and their take on what will happen to consoles. You know the drill. They say that console A won’t meet numbers. They say this will win over that. They say that the console B can cause so much fun that due to the excessive amounts of peace, love, and joy, an inter-dimensional portal will open summoning the evil robotic Santa Claus from Invader Zim… or something like that.
Anyway, here’s some of the more pertinent bits of what the holiday console picture as they see it.
Some of these were quick to point out which hot games we should be looking out to get as gifts:
Anita Frazier, The NPD Group – Zelda! The game with the highest degree of anticipation appears to be The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Other titles I expect to finish well for the holiday season are Call of Duty 3, Final Fantasy XII, and Gears of War.
The industry is up 12% so far this year, and I think there is nothing but good news ahead as we finish out 2006. We should comfortably achieve record-breaking revenues this year.
Michael Pachter, Wedbush Morgan Securities – A huge hit this season will be Guitar Hero II, which I expect to be in scarce supply due to manufacturing constraints for the guitars. (The interesting metric will be how many PS2s are sold to old guys like me who just want that game.)
Some pointed out the holiday console cash-cows:
Ben Bajarin, Creative Strategies – On the PS3, Resistance: Fall of Man will be a driver. On the Xbox 360, Gears of War will be a holiday driver. On the Wii, look for games that really take advantage of the console’s unique capabilities.
Good to see Resistance getting the mention, since online sentiment regarding the depth of the PS3 launch list has been pretty negative in some parts of the world-wide-intarwebs.
Some took time to say how different things will be in Europe (since they don’t have a PS3 yet):
David Mercer, Strategy Analytics – In Europe we don’t have the distraction of a PS3 launch, so it’s a straight fight between the 360 and the Wii. As we said, Nintendo should put in a strong performance, although it only has two weeks after launch to meet demand before the holiday begins. The pressure is really on Microsoft: Only 1% of European households have bought an Xbox 360, so far.
We guess we’ll find out by January if that whole anti-import thing had any impact.
And some say that while the next generation is new and exciting and cool, we shouldn’t count out the previous gen. After all, the next gen won’t really take shape until 2007.
Colin Sebastian, Lazard Capital Markets – The PS3 and Wii launches will help drive traffic to stores, but consumers will be walking away with more products for the older platforms. You have a healthy PS2 market, and the DS and PSP handhelds should be popular holiday gifts.
Ed Barton, Screen Digest – We feel that Nintendo DS will perform strongly this Christmas in all major territories while PS2 software, nowadays largely ignored by the mainstream media, will continue to sell in significant volumes until 2008. PS2 software will generate around $5.2 billion in software sales in 2006, down from $7.6 billion in 2005.
Although new hardware launches are exciting, it is easy to forget that launch performance is not indicative of longer term results. The first meaningful indications as to how the next generation will shape up will not emerge until late 2007.
I’m oddly moved by what he said about launch performance. Reminds me of PS1’s launch.
Via Gamasutra
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