Pachter believes games can weather economic storm
Analyst speaks about the outlook
Wedbush Morgan games industry analyst Michael Pachter has added to Sony exec Kaz Hirai's sentiment from earlier today, stating that he believes the games industry is well positioned to weather the economic storm.
With the economic climate seemingly growing more turbulent every day, the industry has been forced to take a look at how well it is positioned to cope with a potential world recession.
"Software sales growth has been extraordinary thus far in 2008, up 48% through July before slowing to +13% in August," Pachter offers.
"Notwithstanding this month’s anticipated decline, we believe that the video game software sector remains highly recession-resistant… We do not think that the decline in software sales is demand driven; rather, we think it is attributable to a difficult comparison."
The analyst believes that last September is an unrealistic comparison because it saw the release of the best-selling Halo 3.
"We believe that negative sales growth in September will likely cause investor confidence to wane, with the likely consequence that video game publisher stocks will continue to perform weakly until sales growth resumes in October."
