Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter has been offering his insight and wisdom into the world of video game analytics for quite some time. This includes a lot of poor predictions on the outcome of anything related to Nintendo (save for maybe the Wii U) and a lot of equally rocky predictions regarding the current climate of the console war. I don't know how anyone can chalk this one up, but Pachter is convinced that when the NPD rolls out for September later this week, the Xbox One will have soundly trounced the PS4.
According to Venture Beat Michael Pachter sent a note to investors stating...
“We expect Xbox One sales to exceed those of the PS4 for only the second month since launch,” … “From Sept. 7 through [Sept.] 13, Microsoft offered a free game with the purchase of a new Xbox One at participating retailers,”
Pachter believes that Microsoft may have shifted 325,000 SKUs in the U.S., throughout the month of September. He also believes that the PS4 only managed 250,000.
It's strange because most of everyone reporting on this story notes how Destiny – likely the biggest selling game in September – was highly promoted on the Sony PlayStation 4 and even came with the limited white PS4 bundle. Everywhere Destiny was advertised was for the PS4. It seems odd that such a huge property would be affected by a $400 Xbox One and a free digital copy of Madden 15.
What's more is that VG Chartz seems to have an opposite showing of Pachter's predictions (and if we're going by Pachter we may as well show the opposite side of the field for posterity reasons). You can check out VG Chartz' September week-to-week sales below.
Now the site is usually known for being anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 units off, on average, when it comes to sale estimates (though there have been times where they've been close to 60,000 units off). But looking at those week-to-week charts for September is an absolute far cry from Pachter's predictions, even if you want to take off the proverbial 10,000 unit diference.
What's more is that the PS4 is being pegged to likely lead in Destiny's software sales, which would easily tie-in with all the money Sony has been pumping into their marketing campaign. That's not to mention that there's still a perception of the Xbox One from the common consumer that has yet to fully fade, which is why the PS4 has been outselling it every single month on end for the past eight months. I don't really see how the consumer mind-share would instantly shift just because of Madden 15. Consumers have shown that they're not as pliable as some companies think.
Even still, the Venture Beat article notes..
“I kind of think that free Destiny [on Xbox One] was better than [paying] for Destiny on PS4,” Pacther told GamesBeat. He also noted the appeal of the Madden bundle. “That’s pretty compelling.”
Compelling? Against current core customer buying trends? I don't know. In this case I'm leaning more-so toward's VG Chartz being closer to the NPD numbers than Pachter, but we won't know for sure until the embargo is up and the numbers out later this week.
(Main image courtesy of Digital Trends)
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