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Analyst plays down Star Wars: The Old Republic sales concerns

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Michael Pachter cools down talk of estimates being given about sales figures for EA’s The Old Republic, stating that the game was not selling below expectations.
Trying to calm everyone down as Electronic Arts’s share prices are under scrutiny is Wedbush analyst, Michael Pachter, who used the word 'overblown' when describing some of the rumours and reports going around the industry at this point.
To add a bit of background for those who are not as up-to-date with the world of Star Wars: The Old Republic and EA, a number of analysts are claiming that the game has undersold and not met expectations.
This translated into a number of investor and brokers scrutinizing the shares of Electronic Arts, the game’s publisher, which have affected the company’s prices. Pachter himself explains the situation rather well.
“EA shares have been under assault over the past two months (and especially the past week), as many of our competitors have opined that the company’s MM, Star Wars: The Old Republic was tracking well below ‘consensus’ expectations.”
Basically he went on to state that the estimates set by outsiders for EA’s title were way too high to be even considered logical especially when compared to its competitors.
“Some of our competitors have suggested that the ‘consensus’ first quarter sales estimate was 3 million units, or over a million above our own estimate, which we believe is not only unrealistic but borders on the absurd.”
Basically he quoted the example of World of Warcraft which is currently the best selling Massively Multiplayer Online game out there in the market. Blizzard’s title managed to sell 1.5-million units in the first 30 days of going on sale. It went on to sell an impressive 2.5-million more in a year’s time.
Compare those figures with the Old Republics and it should help everyone calm down about the sales target set by EA and how many the game managed to sell as well.
At the same time, one has to wonder why EA have not issued a statement or released the sales figures for their title in an effort to ease unrest in the market.
Pachter also went on to post his own, more realistic estimates claiming that the game should have sold just under two million units up till this point in time and that the game could another two million units in the third quarter of this year.
Whatever the speculation and analysis that companies are coming up with; the bottom line is that EA need to come forward and clarify everything for their own good. That is unless the speculation is bringing about results that they want, in which case they should sit back and enjoy the war of analysts that is currently engulfing the video games industry.

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