Pachter predicts Guitar Hero III win over Rock Band

Following Guitar Hero III‘s early success for its releases to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Wedbush- Morgan’s Michael Pachter has stepped in with his predictions for the video game and publisher Activision. Pachter first stated that Guitar Hero III‘s earlier launch last month put it at a distinct advantage as compared to its upcoming rival, Rock Band by Harmonix.

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Following Guitar Hero III‘s early success for its releases to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Wedbush- Morgan’s Michael Pachter has stepped in with his predictions for the video game and publisher Activision. Pachter first stated that Guitar Hero III‘s earlier launch last month put it at a distinct advantage as compared to its upcoming rival, Rock Band by Harmonix. As the analyst states:

We expect our competitors to make much out of the potential for Rock Band to cannibalize Guitar Hero sales next year. Activision has a big first mover advantage, with 7 million customers already converted to the faithful, and we believe that advantage will grow to approximately 10 million customers before a guitar-only bundle is offered by MTV.

Pachter further stated that Activision was expected to hold its market advantage for the next few years. Even then, Pachter also predicted that Rock Band would still hold competitive market shares, while an overall growth was foreseeable for other possible upcoming music games.

Shifting his attention to Activition, Pachter predicted that the company would surpass Wedbuch-Morgan’s earlier predicted $2.11 billion mark for the fiscal year of 2008. As Pachter elaborated:

We believe that this year’s sales will reflect around 4.5 million units of bundles and 1.5 million units of disc-only sales, comprising around $500 million in total sales. In order to deliver $415 million in sales next year, the company must sell approximately 3 million units of disc-only (around $150 million), plus 3.3 million units of bundles. Given our expectations for significantly higher download revenue and two expansion discs, we think these figures are easily achievable.

Pachter also predicted that Activision’s projected revenues for the fiscal year’s third quarter would be helped along by Sony‘s planned PlayStation 3 price cuts.

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