Analysts Revise EA, Take Two Outlooks In Wake Of NBA Elite Delay

Analysts have revised their financial outlooks for Electronic Arts and competitor Take Two in the wake of yesterday's announcement that EA's NBA Elite 11 would be delayed from October into 2011. Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter lowered his overall sales estimates for Elite through March of 2011 from 1.65 million to 500,000 units, "due to the time-sensitive implications of the release," he said. Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian, on the other hand, doesn't expect Elite will even be released until EA's 2012 fiscal year, which begins in April 2011. EA has only specified that the game will come out some time in 2011. Pachter predicts that the Elite delay will cost EA $60 million in revenues in the third quarter of fiscal 2011, which runs from October through December, 2010. The reduction represents 3.9 percent of Pachter's previously expected $1.52 billion in third quarter revenue for the company, and 1.5 percent of the company's total expected revenue of $3.96 billion for all of fiscal 2011. On the other side, Sebastian predicts NBA2K11 publisher Take Two "will benefit from somewhat higher unit sell-through" for their game due to the lessened competition. He did warn that the newly-announced stand-alone versions of NBA Jam for the Xbox 360 and PS3 may blunt any such effects, however. Sebastian did not alter Lazard's official outlook for EA's current fiscal year, citing the new version of NBA Jam and the conservative nature of the firm's previous estimates. He did, however, warn that EA now enjoyed "less upside potential" over their estimates for the current fiscal year.