Analysts: Wii To Top 1.7m In December, High Requirements Hurt Crysis

Following the NPD's recently reported record November sales, Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter and the simExchange's Jesse Divnich have commented, predicting 1.7 million Wiis sold in December and low Crysis sales due to high hardware requirements. Said Pachter of the results, "The November sales figure is an all-time record for the month, beating November 2004 by over $450 million. The highest December on record was last year’s $1.7 billion, and we expect that figure to be shattered next month. It is normal for December sales to come in at 2x the level in November, but the calendar shift (Black Friday was the earliest possible date) may make this difficult to achieve next month." "Even so, he continued, "we think that a December in excess of $2 billion is likely. It is important to note that the last time the calendar was the same as in 2007 was in 2001, and December sales were 2.1x November’s level. Of course, that year included the launch of the Xbox and GameCube, so the numbers were likely skewed in favor of December sales." Looking forward to potential software hits, Pachter says he believes Unreal Tournament III, MX vs ATV Untamed and the PS2 version of Rock Band should top December sales. Despite being "the least promotional of the three," Pachter says that due to Ubisoft comments that Nintendo has diverted January shipments to fill December demand, he believes the Wii has a chance of selling 1.7 million during the month, adding that he thinks the supply and demand levels should balance in April of 2008. In his own notes, fantasy market simExchange analyst Jesse Divnich has looked into specific software titles outside NPD's top ten, starting with the rocky post-launch of Rockstar's Manhunt 2. "Manhunt 2 was released to the market with great concerns over its content as activist groups and parents claimed the Wii remote control added too much realism to an already violent game," Divnich recalled. "These concerns with Take-Two, the ESRB, and retailers have proven to be unnecessary as sales were a depressing 18,494 units sold in November—making little impact on the industry. This should not be considered a victory for those groups who protested its release, but rather a victory for industry and gamers who did not fall for the market hype of what can only be described as a poorly executed title." And finally, Divnich turned his attention to Crytek's hardware-pushing PC first person shooter, Crysis. "Originally," he said, "the market expected Unreal Tournament 3 to surpass Crysis; however, this was proven to be false as Crysis triumphed over Unreal with 86,633 to 33,995 units, respectively." "It should be noted that even though Crysis beat market expectations," he concluded, "it is far from being called a success, and still suggests that the best PC titles are those that can be readily available to a wider market by having lower hardware requirements."