Pachter: Xbox 360 September victory won't last

by Chris Greenhough { Oct 19th 2007 at 10:30PM }

Michael Pachter? Dude knows his stuff. Totally called Halo 3's the Xbox 360's September sales victory. But dab those tears away, because even though corks might be a-popping now at Microsoft Towers, the Wedbush Morgan man expects the victory to be a fleeting one at best.

"Although sales of Halo 3 accounted for all (and then some) of the growth during the month, the game clearly drove hardware sales that will position the industry for even greater sales in November and December, when many Halo players will be ready for a new challenge," Pachter told Gamasutra.

Loose translation: the Wii will soon have clambered back on its throne, bloodied yet still so very far from beaten. Now, do we all agree?

Tags: analyst, Halo-3, Pachter, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jeremy @ Oct 19th 2007 10:36PM

All hale the Wii in all of its glory.

ELIJAH @ Oct 19th 2007 10:55PM

Is that stephen colbert?

sean @ Oct 19th 2007 11:07PM

the wii is going to rocket when brawl comes out.

Malik @ Oct 20th 2007 12:41AM

It's hail, not hale.

Wii shall own when SSBB, Galaxy, and Heroes 2 come out.

Sonic_13 @ Oct 20th 2007 12:49AM

I think this is the rather obvious news of the day.

When a system sells only 26K more units than Wii when the absolute top game for the system comes out, then they will have a hard time competing with Wii (especially when Wii didn't have any AAA titles come out).

Wii was not bloodied....it wasn't even scratched. In fact, will sold nearly 100,000 more units in September than in August!

As a side note, the DS sold over 112.5K more units than last month.

casual gamers @ Oct 20th 2007 2:50AM

all hail baby game system!

Deviation @ Oct 20th 2007 3:47AM

Why do people care SO MUCH which system sells the most? I just want them all to do well enough that the competition keeps everybody honest and so that everyone gets good games to play.

Rubang B (NDF - Heart) @ Oct 20th 2007 9:38AM

Hey Deviation, remember when Sony was lying over 10 times a day? Now they only lie about once a week. It's because they got rocked by the Wii. The Wii's IS the competition keeping everybody honest, and making sure everybody (else) cuts their prices over and over and over.

Also, we want the Wii to sell the most systems so it gets the most games, 'cuz we've already bought them and we want THE MOST GAMES EVER TO PLAY.

guttertalk @ Oct 20th 2007 11:17AM

Unless the marketing changes before the end of the year, I do not think that Brawl or Galaxy will increase the number of Wii sales the way Halo did. I'm not even talking about Halo numbers. The reason is that they are just not marketed that well beyond the fan base. Not everyone reads blogs or gaming sites. The ad campaign needs to build up the excitement. And having fan movies on youtube doesn't hurt either. :)

I have a Wii and love it, but I also just a 360 and, as a casually hardcore gamer, I see how the voice chat, easy online multiplayer and demos help make it a very appealing platform.

Guitar Hero is multiplatform so I just don't see that increasing hardware sales.

What should concern us as Wii owners is the Wii software sales, which hasn't been nearly as good as the hardware numbers, which is one reason I think Wii fansites focus on the hardware numbers. Given the number of consoles for the 360 and the Wii, the software sales should be better for the Wii, even if there are half the titles for the Wii.

I'm not dooming the Wii. I think they will, in fact, have excellent hardware sales through the holidays, at least, because it is a good platform. It could do better if the games were better marketed.

Jim @ Oct 20th 2007 11:59AM

Ninwiiboy: Pachter's comment doesn't mean what you says it means. You say, loosely, that what he says is this; "Wii will be back on top after September." What he actually says is this; "Halo 3 sold a lot of games and 360s. After people stop playing Halo 3, they will want to buy more games. And they will have a 360 to play them on. So they will buy more 360 games."

So... unless you took the wrong quote, this is not actually good news for the Wii.

I have both a 360 and Wii, and I play the 360 a couple times a week. The Wii gets turned on (maybe) when we have company over, for some Wii Sports. Do I regret the purchase? If there is a price cut between now and when games I actually want to play are exclusive to the Wii, yes, I do. SSBB, Metroid and Mario don't count - I want some real, meaty 3rd party games. Maybe something, *crosses fingers*, Western-developed, non-mini-game, non-kiddy, AAA title?

All in all, I think people like me are the reason Wii is winning the hardware battle, but losing the software battle. Anybody else regretting their purchase?

bighit24 @ Oct 20th 2007 12:12PM

I highly doubt the people who bought Halo 3 and want a "new challenge" in coming months would really want to get it from Cooking Momma or Wii Play or Boogie. I am sorry, but Nintendo is becoming like Sony used to be with their Wii. Nintendo is incredibly arrogant now even though once their first party titles for all their franchises come out, the quality Wii titles will dry up. Nintendo can run around acting like it is not true, but the reality is Nintendo STILL has crappy third party support compared to MS and even Sony.

Trogdor @ Oct 20th 2007 12:16PM

I could care less who's winning. I just like Metroid, Mario, Zelda, etc. I was going to get a 360, but guess what? My mom's all anal about me getting M-rated games, and about 99 out of 100 games on the 360 are M-Rated. I loved the original Xbox because it had plenty of t rated games, and my mom let me get Halo 2. But Microsoft screwed me over.So no, I don't regret my Wii purchase. And once some Western developers pull their heads out of their asses, they'll realize that more people than just 5 year olds and grandmas own Wiis.

mian @ Oct 20th 2007 1:33PM

I hate to say it, but Jim is correct. The Pachter quote you used does not predict a short lived 360 victory--it's an unrelated point to the console hardware war, and point that favor MS as their new gamers look for more 360 software.

This is the quote you should have used to make your point, from Jesse Divinch: Finally, though the Xbox 360 saw higher sales than both the Wii and DS, Divinch says the victory "is expected to be short lived with the Wii regaining the top spot for the remaining months in 2007."

You appear to have misread the ambiguous first paragraph, where Pachter says the industry is on solid footing, but Divinch predicted a shortlived 360 hardware victory. They should have used the word respectively, or flat out divided the paragraph.

LV426 @ Oct 20th 2007 2:39PM

Did we have an invasion of Xbots here?

Fact is, Nintendo got outrun for this month, but they really didnt lose business. It's all on 360 to keep up their speed because the Wii STILL isnt slowing down (Looking at online retailer yesterday, only ones to have Wiis at all were Amazon.com and Walmart (who was by bundle only), so I dont see them hurt as much as watching Microsoft punch a nitro. That doesnt mean the race is over (and in fact globally, Wii still has the numbers depending on where you go, but it's neck and neck).

All that said, I think their are exactly two combos that win this round... Wii60 or PWii (PC/Wii). Iether way the library is the same for the most part, so it comes down to controller or keyboard mouse and which you like best. These combos pretty much say you can play whatever the hell you want.

ALH @ Oct 20th 2007 3:19PM

'I highly doubt the people who bought Halo 3 and want a "new challenge" in coming months would really want to get it from Cooking Momma or Wii Play or Boogie. I am sorry, but Nintendo is becoming like Sony used to be with their Wii. Nintendo is incredibly arrogant now even though once their first party titles for all their franchises come out, the quality Wii titles will dry up. Nintendo can run around acting like it is not true, but the reality is Nintendo STILL has crappy third party support compared to MS and even Sony.'

Is it possible for a desert to get any dryer?! I mean seriously, i came into this generation expecting to be all about the wii but a year on and all i have are games which have lost their novelty and a massive case of buyers remorse.

Mr Khan @ Oct 20th 2007 3:22PM

They would have to be MS fanboys, because they seem to disacknowledge anything "Eastern-developed" as a good game,

I thought we put this argument to rest, we get the good games, and they continue to say those games aren't there

They must have slept straight through TGS

Jim @ Oct 20th 2007 3:46PM

All good things must come to an end...

REALLY, who's paying this man, I want his job. Can't be that hard, next quote would be "markets are in constant flux".

akatsuki @ Oct 20th 2007 11:06PM

If they would have just had online multiplayer for Prime, they really would not have had anything to worry about. When, oh when, will they fix the damn online experience?

DaiMac79 @ Oct 21st 2007 7:14AM

Hmm, I know nobody here cares about it, but have you all forgotten about WiiFit? That thing is going to sell Wiis, whether serious gamers want to admit it or not. As has already been mentioned, if the Wii continues to gain critical mass it will continue to garner more and more titles...Capcom isn't going to be the last Japanese developer to move an important exclusive to the Wii in the not too distant future, just watch.

I have Wii/360/PC and have been paying close attention to the "PS3 situation", I was telling people in 2005 that Sony was going to have a hard time selling the thing for what they were charging. The Wii doing so well will force Sony and MS to continue fighting harder with more price cuts and service/development upgrades, which only benefits every console owner regardless of preference in the end. I would love to see MS get truly agressive and put the "Arcade 360" even closer to Wii's price; I've said before I think Nintendo should add some serious pack-ins at the current price pack and drop the "bare bones" Wii that "only" has Wii sports by at least 20-30 dollars, just to keep their cushion going into the holidays. Obviously they aren't thinking that way right now, but if MS puts that arcade system at, say 249 in late november plus a $20 rebate/xbox live card/etc? I mean, its almost the same memory as Wii, thats my one big gripe with the system, I love it as a VC box regardless of its other virtues but am running out of space in 512MB, I want a serious hard drive, either my own USB or something proprietary from Nintendo, I will shamelessly pay them far too much for some type of console-locked USB flash device if thats how it has to be, just give me at least 4GB, 8 or 16 being much better of course, and again a real HD being the best.

Think of it this way: if the Wii, 360 and PS3 are racecars, and the Wii is winning, that just means the owners of the other cars will continue to make theirs better, tweaking them, perhaps even replacing them; MS certainly seems willing to shorten console generation, esp if they do somehow do let Toshiba make HD-DVD capable 360s and *gasp* make HD-DVD games possible: real reason for GTA delay? just speculating wildly, like Pachter ;)

I don't see why thats such a big deal if it does happen, as they're practically giving away the HD-DVD drive as it is and you cannot tell me that a firmware update wouldn't allow a launch day 360 (one of those fortunate to not RROD, I'm on number 3 in one year) to play HD-DVD games. Hell, the Heroes giveaway thing plus 5 HD-DVD movies for the same price ($179) is free as far as I'm concerned, unless you just hate Heroes, in which case please buy it and contact me about me buying it from you for 80 bucks, as long as its still shrinkwrapped, opened I'll give you 50 ;)

I love my HD-DVD drive, if for no other reason than BSG season 1 coming out in a couple of months.

But yeah, this is a marathon the Wii is still favored to win at this point, we'll see what happens.

DaiMac79 @ Oct 21st 2007 7:17AM

@DaiMac79: "I've said before I think Nintendo should add some serious pack-ins at the current price pack"

*price _point_ obviously.

Patius @ Oct 21st 2007 3:09PM

ALL HAIL THE WII!

(bows to his console.)

And no, it isn't Stephen Colbert.

BlackBeltJones @ Oct 21st 2007 7:19PM

Wii will probably regain the top hardware spot quickly but I think software sales might take awhile. I mean I don't know if I've ever seen Wii outsell the 360 in software units. Famitsu (THE game magazine in Japan) just reported that 2/3 of Japanese Wiis aren't getting regular use. I don't know about you guys but the only game I've played on my wii in the last few months is Wind Waker.