Pachter: PS3 will trump 360 by 2015

As part of his report that outlined the true scale of the North American pre-owned software market, Wedbush Morgan’s analyst Michael Pachter has thrown the cat amongst the pigeons by predicting that PS3 will ultimately overtake Xbox 360’s install base in this generation of machines.

Crediting the Blu-ray alliance’s victory over Toshiba in the hi-def disc market, Pachter expects the PS3’s user base to have overtaken Xbox 360’s by 2015.

Indeed, more specifically he claims that Wii will have captured a 49 per cent share of the market across North American and Europe by the end of 2009, with Xbox 360 claiming 29 per cent and PS3 22 per cent.

However, by the end of 2011 he expects Sony and Microsoft to be neck-and-neck on 26 per cent.

We think that the PS3 will capture significant market share, primarily due to Sony’s victory in the high definition DVD format war, and will end up in second place by 2015,” Pachter predicted.

Although Microsoft’s Xbox 360 enjoyed a first mover advantage, we think that its market position will fade to third place due to lack of penetration in Japan.”

However, Pachter wisely points out that even if Xbox 360 does end up being outsold by both of its rival platforms, the machine has been anything but a failure for platform holder Microsoft.

Notwithstanding the projected finish, we truly believe that all three manufacturers should be considered ‘winners’, with Microsoft selling twice as many Xbox 360s as Xbox’s and building a robust Xbox Live business, and with the other two companies generating significant profits from their respective shares.”