Pachter: Microsoft 'Most Impactful' Of E3, Sony's PSP Go 'Mispriced'

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter says that Microsoft's E3 presentation was the "most impactful," while the volume and structure of Sony's show detracted from the strength of its content. "Sony’s content was fine, but their presentation was too long, and had way too much information, much of it not important 'news,' Pachter tells Gamasutra. The company also 'didn’t do a particularly good job of differentiating the PSP Go from the PSP 3000.'" Sony gets an "A for content" thanks to a "fantastic" lineup of first-party titles and third-party exclusives, the analyst says, but believes the PSP Go! is mispriced too high -- "particularly as I believe that the UMD disc drive assembly has to cost more than 16 Gb of flash memory, so I’m hard pressed to see why the retail price should go up by $80," he says. In his note to investors, he adds that "after a rush of fanboy purchases, sales of the device may stall." "In my view, Sony is trying to position the device as a competitor to the iPod Touch, and it is going to fall flat without an apps store and a touch screen." If Microsoft gave the best show and Sony had a few missteps, Pachter estimates that Nintendo brings up the rear with the "least impactful" presentation, since it announced only one core title for this year. But the analyst finds that "Nintendo’s content offering is quite broad, with a balance of hard core and casual games for both the DS and the Wii."