Although he still doesn't think that a price cut for the PlayStation 3 will be coming this year, Lazard Capital Market analyst Colin Sebastian urged investors not to count Sony out just yet. Hit the full article for details.

After GTA4, you'd think this hullabaloo would be over. But it isn't. Analyst Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital says that new developments over the proposed buyout of Take-Two Interactive would come next week, and that Electronic Arts would likely have something new to add to their offer.

We've been taking days and weeks for granted (hence, the prevalence of procrastination among many people), but the projected January sales numbers may just show us how important a week is. According to some analysts, January 2008's sales numbers were cut off by approximately 18 percent since it is one week less compared to last year's January. Read more about it in the full article!

The NPD Group will soon release the software and platform sales numbers for December, so it's time once again to hear from our favorite analysts, Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan and Colin Sebastian from Lazard Capital Markets. Check out the full article to find out what they predict for December's results.

The holiday season is almost here, and we'll most likely see lots of console units and gaming software end up underneath the Christmas tree and in the Christmas socks of all good children. However, too much demand that outweighs the actual supply is always a bad thing.

Analyst Colin Sebastian from Lazard Capital Markets said that there will indeed be a general hardware shortage, not only for the Wii (as mentioned by Reggie Fils-Aime in his statement that there will be a Wii console shortage this holiday season). Explained Sebastian,

Holiday hardware demand may outstrip supplies. We believe one of the themes from the upcoming holiday period could be hardware supply constraints, driven by ongoing strong demand for Nintendo’s Wii and a shift in Xbox 360 unit sales from 4Q into the September quarter, while Sony’s PS3 and PSP may benefit from lower price points.

So aside from the almost-inevitable Wii shortage, we may also witness shopping brawls over who gets the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3? Certainly not an impossible scenario, what with the release of the more affordable PlayStation 40GB SKUs, and quite possibly the newly launched Xbox 360 arcade SKU, which is aimed at the casual market.

Despite THQ's under-performance for this quarter, analysts Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan and Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Market remain optimistic for the game developer studio and maintains that the company's stock is still a "buy."

THQ's revenue for this quarter was significantly lower than their initial forecast, owing to the lack of sales of two of their games in the market: Stuntman: Ignition (PS2, PS3, 360) and Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights (PS3, PS2, PSP, Xbox 360, PC, DS). This, however, did not deter Pachter who, despite lowering his estimates for THQ, says that this is not likely to happen again.

Sebastian shares the same sentiments, saying that THQ's 2009 lineup seems to be a "significant improvement," mentioning their next Pixar video game adaptation of Wall-E, Saints Row 2 and the sequel to Red Faction. He predicts that the video game for Wall-E will do much better than their Ratatouille saying: "Stated simply, robots are cuter than rats, and make for better video game fodder."

THQ has announced earlier that they will be lowering their fiscal Q2 revenue guidance from US$ 240 million to US$ 229 million, and full-year sales of US$ 1.12 billion to US$ 1.06 billion.

Electronic Arts has recently reorganized its top-ranking officials and made some key changes to its administrative roster. The maneuver was welcomed by a lot of observers, but one analyst made an interesting observation.

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter says that the reorganization was a good move and a necessary one for the publisher, but someone seems to be missing in the equation: R&D  head Paul Lee. "In our view, the most important item in the press release is the omission of any mention about Paul Lee, the current head of R&D. It appears to us that Mr. Lee may have been reorganized out of a job," he says. Pachter continues:

He has been in his position for about a year, following the departure of Don Mattrick last year, and in that brief period, we believe that EA game quality has improved. However, we think that Mr. Riccitiello is laser focused on cost control, given that the R&D budget has doubled during his three-year hiatus from EA, while revenues have grown by only around 5%.

According to the analyst, one reason why EA is reorganizing may be because the administration has decided not to go all-out on research and development. He says he expects EA to begin talking more about its plans and policies soon.

For one, Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets agrees with Pachter on the necessity of restructuring. "We believe the restructuring was a necessary byproduct of EA's rapid growth over the last video game cycle compounded by operational challenges evident during the recent console transition period," he says.

No official word from EA has been released regarding Lee's status and what the new policy on research and development is. A statement is expected by many to come out any time soon. We'll keep you posted for more.

  

Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian claims that Sony is indeed working on a revamped PSP as the company implied during Sony's Gamers Day, or so Sebastian claims. This could mean any upgrade or additional features could be in the works. But as he puts it, a "hardware refresh... may or may not mean a change in form".

Since the PlayStation got PSOne, and PlayStation 2 got its PS2 Slim version, it's not very surprising that Sony would dish out something like that for the PSP too. Sebastian couldn't cite any specific sources, but he said "I can tell you from industry people I've talked to that [Sony] definitely has something in the works."

Will they turn the PSP into a mobile phone ala N-gage (well, we hope not...)? Or do something about its battery life? Make the controls more intuitive? It's pretty difficult to imagine that they'd reduce its size, but given Sony's history with the consoles, it's feasible. Any educational guesses?

The PS3 continues to build up steam, with Sony reportedly planning to release 90 third-party titles and 15 exclusives from first and third parties for the PS3 this year. This according to a Sony Gamers Day recap from Lazard Capital Markets.

Fans of Sony's PSP handheld system will be getting some much-needed love too. According to Lazard games industry analyst Colin Sebastian, "[Sony] also indicated that 140 titles would launch on the PSP, while a video download service and hardware refresh are expected later this year."

Rumors about a hardware refresh have been floating around the Internet for quite some time now, and just recently the rumor has resurfaced once again.

 

As confirmation to the EBGames and GameStop price drop sightings, the official word from Sony claims that the price tag has dropped by US$ 30 all over North America, making the U.S.-only word CVG got from Sony extends its horizons over Canada. So if you check a couple of Canuck EBGames retail stores there, you'd find that the PlayStation Portable CORE package is also now available at a modest US$ 169 tag.

Lazard Capital Markets noted that in Black Friday just last year, a Wal-Mart discount promotion sporting the same price of US$ 169 was able to reel in greater sales. They claim that this proves the demand for the handheld actually exists, although it is price-sensitive.

Sony, however, is not only hoping that the PSP would garner a modest gain in sales for after the price drop. They are also hoping that the line up of popular franchise titles, such as Ratchet & Clank, Syphon Filter and God of War, will also help the PSP sell like hotcakes. Gran Turismo for the PSP, coming in the second half of 2007, is also expected to boost unit sales in the near future.

Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets hopes to breathe new life into the PSP marketing campaign. They are planning an online and print campaign for young adults and teens, besides gamers-on-the-go. "In terms of software, we believe hardware price cuts can positively affect game sales with an expanding installed base as well as additional foot traffic in retail stores," said Sebastian, concluding:

It is too early to conclude whether Sony's pricing action will cause game developers to increase the pipeline of new PSP titles; however, several publishers publicly called on Sony to lower the PSP price and broaden the consumer end market. At the new $169 price, we note that the PSP is still $40 higher than Nintendo's DS.