Americans have been buffeted with news of our nation's pending recession and the devaluation of our dollar for months now, but in a market with such standardized prices, the American video game industry and game consumers haven't really felt the effect of our economic instability. However, according to industry analyst and prognosticator extraordinaire Michael Pachter, our pecuniary puniness is the cause for the current American Wii Fit shortage -- nearly four times as many copies of the title made their way to Europe, where the Euro, unlike the dollar, is gaining strength.

In Pachter's own words, "We're seeing companies ignore their largest market simply because they can make a greater profit elsewhere." You don't need to be a revered industry analyst to notice that -- the title, which sells for $90 in the U.S., is speedily selling for the equivalent of $140 in Europe. Pachter also remarks that Americans can afford to wait for future shipments of the title, as Nintendo knows "that Americans will be just as fat a few months from now." Words hurt, Pachter. Words hurt.

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]

When the Wii started its march to dominance and began trouncing the 360, it was kind of sweet. It was like a come-from-behind underdog story where the camp for fat kids managed to beat the camp for rich athletic kids in the big softball game simply by working hard and believing in themselves. But now, it's almost become a little sad. The rich kids all lost their scholarships and waistlines and started working at Citgo, while the fat kids grew progressively fatter thanks to crap like Carnival Games and teasing the masses with incredible-looking titles that they will, sadly, not play in their lifetimes.

But according to Michael Pachter, the formerly rich and athletic kids may have won a round last month against their portly nemeses. The video game analyst believes that the 360 will have beaten the Wii 450,000 to 425,000 when sales numbers for September have been added up. It's sure to be a nice boost for the dethroned pretty boys, but since last month also marked the release of Halo 3, they perhaps shouldn't get too comfortable at the top.

As a master of the occult, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has access to an astonishing amount of prescient items. He typically rotates them, most recently speaking to the mirror which he got at an estate sale from a Queen who apparently took a nasty fall. Pachter went up to the mirror and asked, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall. In July, who's the console winner of them all?"

The Mirror replied, "Why the Nintendo Wii and DS, of course."

Miffed at the information given by his impulse purchase, Pachter replies, "You better tell me something I don't already know or I'm shipping you by freight to Pidgeon!"

In a moment of sheer panic the Mirror blurts out, "NPD will report the PS3 beat the Xbox 360 in sales for July."

Pachter believes that for the month of July, which will be official from NPD on Aug. 23, that the DS (450,000 units) and Wii (330,000) dominated sales in North America. Although, for the first time ever, the PS3 will show sales of 160,000 units, while the Xbox 360 will have 115,000. This would also mean that the PS3 will have doubled sales since announcing their 60GB clearance sale last month. He goes on to say that the Xbox warranty issue was a speed bump for Microsoft as "as consumers struggled with the meaning of the 'three red rings of death' issue." He believes that the price cut and apparent fix of the design flaw will rebound Xbox 360 sales.

Everyone's favorite Wedbush-Morgan analyst, Michael Pachter, joins IDC's Billy Pidgeon for this weeks episode of Bonus Round, focusing on video game analysts. Throughout their interview with Geoff Keighley, one thing is made abundantly clear: they're not doing their job for us, the players, but for the serious investors out there.

That said, the question that seems to pop up every time their comments filter their way through the media is, "Why should we listen to them in the first place?"

Michael Pachter says, "Nobody should listen to me on my opinion about anything." That would be a legendary quote right there, but Pachter continues, "... Except whether one of the companies I cover is going to meet or miss an earnings estimate and how they're going to perform going forward." Curses. You win this round, Pachter! Insightful as well as educational, it's another episode of Bonus Round worth checking out.

Wedbush-Morgan's Michael Pachter has been around the industry long enough to know that the first thing you do as an analyst the Monday after E3 is a brain dump. Bright and early this morning we received his report entitled "E3 2007 Review: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" in which Mr. Pachter fills you in on the stocks to buy, hold on to, and sell in the relative future (Cliffs Notes version found after the break).

Pachter says the theme of this E3 was "non-traditional" game software. Music games, games targeting or including female gamers and titles focused on the casual market. He also says that unlike prior E3s, access to new product offerings was relatively unrestricted -- well yeah, because everyone was there for business and barely had time to see the hangar. The key companies Pachter says to invest in are Activision, EA, THQ and Ubisoft. He also says the the big news of E3 was the Sony "price cut" and that he expects Microsoft to follow by the end of the year. But what about that 60GB not being manufactured news? Pachter thinks the $499 PS3 is here to stay and, when those 60GB units are depleted, the 80GB model will take its place.

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter said that publisher Majesco is "close to returning to profitability" and predicts the Cooking Mama series has earned sales of $15 million this quarter. That figure, according to Gamasutra, is above the $13 million consensus estimate for quarterly sales.

"We are increasingly positive on shares now that the company has been able to stabilize revenues in the $12 – 13 million quarterly range," he said, "and believe that Majesco can break even at $65 million in annual revenues."

Majesco had at one point hit the proverbial rock bottom, spurred by dismal sales of Advent Rising and Joystiq favorite Psychonauts. The publisher is moving into the black through its sales of budget titles (six DS, one Wii and one Xbox 360 titles are coming this quarter), and we fully expect them to keep with what works. Folks who were hoping for a high-budget Cooking Mama Xtreme Beach Cookoff will probably have to wait for at least a few years of profitability.

Unfortunately, we can't attribute Michael Pachter's warning to Activision as a direct quote, as analysts are forbidden from saying "Hey" and are forced to substitute the informal greeting with "pardon me" or "pay attention to me, please." In commenting on Activision's glowing fiscal report and strong NPD presence to GameDaily BIZ, Pachter draws attention to several challenges Activision faces in the coming months. "All things are not perfect in Activision's world," he says.

Pachter predicts that the glaring imperfections (to put it mildly) highlighted by reviewers in the Spider-Man 3 games will curtail sales, and that Call of Duty 4's proposed Iraq setting may prove to leave an equally bad taste in the consumer's mouth. More interestingly, the analyst notes that if Harmonix's EA-published Rock Band is fully playable with just a guitar controller, it will "compete quite favorably with Activision's [Guitar Hero]." He suspects the instrument protagonist genre will remain kind to RedOctane's owner, but adds that "new entrants will impact future growth of the band." Or did he mean brand?

Once the dust settles in the battle of the fake bands, will Pachter still stand by his belief that Activision was right to buy RedOctane over Harmonix?

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has drawn a parallel between the success of a high-definition format and its related game console, believing that Sony will gain an "insurmountable advantage" over Microsoft if movie studios embrace Blu-ray, and vice-versa for Microsoft to "maintain its first mover advantage."

"Notwithstanding the efforts of the three console manufacturers to deliver compelling exclusive content, we expect the ultimate outcome of the console wars to be decided by the motion picture studios," he said.

Pachter ultimately predicts a close, three-way tie in the market share for this generation of consoles: Sony at 36%, Nintendo at 34% and Microsoft at 30%. In Japan, he said, Ninendo will have a 51% share through 2011 (is Pachter also a time traveler?), Sony with 44% and Microsoft presumably with the remaining 5%.

Remember, for every conclusion you may draw from Pachter's report, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other analysts with contradictory conclusions. Should either high-definition format come out on top, it still has to contend with its big brother, DVD, for some time now, and therefore its impact on the console wars is minimal at best compared to the system's relative price and software.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

Did you catch the Take Two shareholders meeting yesterday? Don't worry if you missed it, the event turned out to be much less dramatic than we had hoped. However, it was not without some ruffled feathers, as now-former CEO Paul Eibeler was shown the door. Taking his place is Ben Feder, a former executive at News Corp, as acting CEO.

Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities expresses disappointment that the new management is giving themselves a three- to six-month window. Also, Pachter said of Feder, "he appears to have no meaningful experience managing a large organization, nor does his resume suggest that he has any practical experience in the video game industry."

Game Politics has a roundup of more opinions regarding this executive shuffle. Our take, however limited in scope, is that Eibeler was a beacon for bad news. His ousting can only spell an upward trend.

When video game analysts are mentioned, most of us who closely follow game news think of Michael Pachter. Like any analyst, their predictions aren't perfect. In fact, many abide by the 51% rule; if you get at least 51% of your predictions right, you're a good analyst.

Back in November, Pachter predicted GameStop (GME) to ride a wave of consumer spending on video games. GameStop has released some information proving that buy a good one. GameStop has increased its already strong revenue outlook by $50 million and its Q4 earnings per share from $1.53-$1.59 to $1.58-$1.60.

On top of other interesting sales promotions, GameStop certainly enjoyed the console launches and top-selling games like Gears of War immensely. GameStop is still looking like a strong buy with the strong Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii lineups for 2007 along with continuing PS2 support (though not everyone is in consensus on this). Since we're going to make some money off this one, we're going to forgive Pachter for some of his missed predictions.

Analysts are the life-blood of investors. We need some kind of opinion of where a company may be going; if we don't get it, we feel uneasy about a company's future. Michael Pachter is one of those people.

In an interview with N'Gai Croal, Pachter primarily discusses his bullish Xbox 360 predictions and how they've essentially fallen flat. He cites the bigger impact the lack of HD sets in homes had as well as miscalculated the price-insensitivity of the hardcore crowd. He thinks a simple price cut won't solve the matters (at least until his magical $150 mark is hit). Pachter further states he expects the PS3 to sell at the same rate as the 360 did since launch.

Given Pachter's history, we're beginning to wonder if he is on a stretch of bad luck, or shouldn't be listened to at all. He did predict the PS3 would outsell the Wii (then called Revolution) by up-to 60% this year as well as predicted 2006 to be a slow year for gaming (deemed wrong by his future prediction to buy GameStop stock); neither prediction came out close. We guess it is true; analysts are people paid to have an opinion.

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.