Crispy Gamer News

Analyst Michael Pachter, who some believe is the second coming, says that that the interactive entertainment is pretty much recession proof. Is the video game industry bullet proof when it comes to our lagging economy? The Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst thinks that, while there might be a slight decline in the sector for Sept., it will nonetheless be pretty darn profitable. But Pachter attributes this mostly to not having a killer app like Halo 3 to bolster software and hardware sales - at least for Microsoft and not the state of the economy or consumer confidence.

So what are his predictions for the Sept. numbers coming this Thursday from NPD? Sales will be down six percent to $620 million, compared to Sept. 2007 numbers due to no killer apps like Halo 3 - he says that if you ignore the Halo 3 effect, the numbers would show an increase of 44 percent. Other predictions include 600,000 Wii sales, 550,000 DS sales, around 300,000 Xbox 360 sales, PS3 sales of 175,000 and PSP sales of 200,000.

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Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter thinks E3 is dead. Like the witch under Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz, E3’s candy cane colored sox are curling up and those ruby slippers are up for grabs. However, in Pachter’s latest prognostications, he includes some general advice that publishers (like EA and Ubisoft) have already delivered: the show needs to be tweaked, repositioned and moved to earlier in the year.

“The solitude of this year’s E3 made patently obvious to us that the ESA membership made a mistake in downsizing the show last year,” said Pachter.

So what’s the solution? Striking a balance between the circus of the 60,000 of the old show and the 5,000 attendees of the new one, bringing back a little bit of the glitz and glamor, and moving the show to a date that makes sense.

Source: GI.biz

Is Take-Two secretly talking with Electronic Arts behind the scenes to hammer out a deal, even while it publicly spurns their advances? Analysts say yes - and the industry’s most visible financial analyst says it with feeling:

“Of course they’re talking. They have to be talking because it’s the right thing to do,? said Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter (to Fortune) before EA’s tender offer expired last Friday.

Of course, Mr. Pachter has been wrong before and he’ll probably be wrong again, but it makes sense that there would be some continued communications between the key players of both companies. The bottom line is that Take-Two wants a bigger offer and until EA makes one, the deal will probably remain stalled. Whatever happens, we’ll keep you posted as this story continues to develop.