Michael Pachter Million Quotations

We expect a price cut for the PS2 later this year. We believe that Sony will respond to Microsoft's introduction of its next generation console with a cut from $149 to $99 some time before the November 22 Xbox 360 launch, ... We think that Sony has positioned itself to lower price by reducing the production costs of its console when it redesigned the box to a smaller format... Should Sony choose to discount the PS2 to $129 or even $99, we would expect a dramatic lift in PS2 hardware sales, and a corresponding lift in PS2 software sales. Our model forecasts that Sony PS2 hardware sales will be 1.8 million units higher this year compared to last year.

There are 5 million people who really believe they are getting an Xbox 360 relatively soon, by February. Microsoft has shipped 500,000 units, so 4.5 million people are doing nothing. That's enough to just kill Christmas.

In the U.S. they'll sell out at 1.5 million right away. They won't last a week.

The number of units is a manufacturing constraint. You can't start production from zero and ramp to a million a week.

I don't think there are four million people in the world who really want to play online games every month. World of Warcraft is such an exception. I frankly think it's the buzz factor, and eventually it will come back to the mean, maybe a million subscribers. It may continue to grow in China, but not in Europe or the U.S. We don't need the imaginary outlet to feel a sense of accomplishment here. It just doesn't work in the U.S. It just doesn't make any sense.