Tag Archives: mike hickey

Mike Hickey from Janco Partners has turned his analytical nostrils up at THQ’s funny Saints Row 2 trailer, released last week.

“The trailer directly attacks Grand Theft Auto IV in game content, an unusually pompous position in our view, considering GTA IV is estimated to be the highest grossing 1st week entertainment release of all time,” argued Hickey from an unusually defensive standpoint for someone who has nothing to do with GTA.

“We remain conservative on our sales expectations for Saint’s Row 2,” added Hickey, “in light of mediocre game previews and a delayed release in-part from quality concerns.”

Handbags, gentleman.

Thanks Gamasutra.

By Mike Bowden

Mike Hickey, analyst for Janco Partners, believes that EA CEO John Riccitiello overstepped the mark in a New York Times interview yesterday, in which he described EA as a “white knight” attempting to rescue Rockstar from Take-Two’s instability by buying the firm.

“My belief is Rockstar would be perfectly happy if EA never put a bid in at all. White knight commentary is total bullshit, and disrespectful to both the developers at TTWO and the new management team that has already achieved success,” he said.

Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter was also fairly blunt about the comment.

“‘White Knight’ usually signifies rescue from a hostile suitor (the connotation is to a damsel in distress),” he said. “I think Riccitiello’s use of the term was incorrect, and perhaps a misplaced attempt to sound clever. They are in no sense a White Knight.”

There isn’t much love in the room. Take-Two investors currently have a deadline of April 11 to respond to a tender off of $26 per share for the company from EA.

So says this. Analyst Mike Hickey reckons EA could go to $30 a share from the current offer of $26 per share.

Not everyone shares his view. Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter has said that he expects EA to add $1-2 per share before attempting more hostile measure to assume control of the company.

Janco analyst Mike Hickey has given hardware sales estimates for the year, predicting a tie in the US for PS3 and Xbox 360 at 5 million units a piece, with Wii stealing the show with 8 million. Stealing the show, that is, apart from DS: Hickey expects Americans to buy another 8 million units of Nintendo’s handheld in 2008.

The main story here is PS3. While sales kicked in thanks to a price cut and a smattering of decent software towards the back of 2007, 2008 is likely to see a heavy price drop and the like of GT5, Killzone 2 and possibly FFXIII this Christmas. In a word, “boom”.

“We expect PS3 unit sales will perform exceedingly strong in CY08, due to a recently reduced price point, killer content coming into the channel (GTA), and Blu-ray currently having a decided edge in the high definition format war,” said Hickey. “We believe the slower relative adoption rate of Sony’s PS3 console was a reflection of an unfavorable retail price point ($600), lack of distinguishing content, highly competitive hardware options (Wii), and general value confusion over the console’s embedded Blu-ray player. Considering Sony has sold in excess of 120 million PS2 units globally, we anticipate the PS3 adoption rate could accelerate meaningfully in the coming years as the aforementioned issues are addressed and legacy PS2 players’ accelerate their transition to current gen.”

Full thing here.