Pachter says GTA IV will sell 9 million at launch. No, it won’t.
Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter is making quite a name for himself with his predictions. The latest of note to us is his predication that GTA IV will sell some nine million copies at launch across both systems. Here’s what he’s talking about.
“The addressable market at launch is about 24 million consoles,” says Michael Pachter, video game analyst at Wedbush Morgan. “So how many will sell in the first week or month or few months? Nine million. That’s the number. That’s about a 35 percent attach rate. By year’s end, it’ll be somewhere between 11 and 13 million because more consoles will be sold before the holidays.”
Hold on there, cowboy. Addressable market of 24 million consoles? That doesn’t seem right to me.
With roughly 10 million PS3s out there and roughly 15 million Xbox 360s, we’re going to have to make some assumptions. The biggest leap would be that all those Xbox 360s are still working. Let’s say that cuts the addressable number of 360s by a million, just to be conservative. I’m going by the acknowledged failure rates now, not the reported ones. Then you need to assume everyone only owns one Xbox 360. Our own George has mentioned that he owns three. Then you need to assume those 360s are in regions where this game will be launching this week, which many of them aren’t, they’re in other territories.
All these assumptions, save for the failure rates, also need to apply to PS3s. In addition, there is a segment of the PS3 owning population that is not gaming on the system, and only bought it as a Blu-Ray player.
Nine million copies? Well, eventually, but not at launch. I’d point more at a still-impressive four million, Mike.
Source: Yahoo! News
Tags: grand theft auto, gta, hype, installed base, launch, michael pachter, rockstar, wedbush morgan, yahoo
