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.

Following the release of THQ's second quarter fiscal 2008 results, Lazard Capital analyst Colin Sebastian has revealed that Lazard expects THQ to "remain more closely aligned" with Nintendo and Microsoft's respective platforms compared to those from Sony. Sebastian also mentioned a few of THQ's key titles which are expected to help pull up the company's revenues from internal studios. Check out Sebastian's statement at the full article.

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.

Retail chain GameStop this morning had its quarterly conference call and companies Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony were somehow included in the discussion. Before we go to the interesting part, let us tell you first that the retail chain performed pretty well last year as it generated more than US$ 5.3 billion for the fiscal year of 2006.

Anyway, during the question and answer portion of the meeting, COO Dan DeMatteo mentioned that there's a perfectly good explanation for the the current Wii supply shortage. The number of limited units are rather scarce, DeMatteo explained, because Nintendo intended it to be so.

"I don't think Wii supply is going to be an issue going forward, and it's just my opinion, I think Nintendo intentionally dried up their supply because they made their numbers for the year. Nintendo's new year starts April 1st, and I think we're going to see supply flowing. We were concerned about the dryness of Wii inventory in March, but it looks like April is going to be good," further discussed the official.

CEO R. Richard Fontaine was then asked by Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian about their take on the PlayStation 3 (PS3) PAL launch. The official claimed that the launch was not that good, as reported by their European counterpart. Fontaine admitted, "I think the summary of that was that it was a very good launch falling somewhat short of what GameStop's Euro managing directors would call a great launch."

After that, DeMatteo shared that Nintendo DS Lite was able to sell 5 million units in U.S. alone, prompting the official to call the handheld "phenomenal." The PlayStation Portable (PSP), on the other hand, is pretty much doing good as well with a total number of over 3 million units sold. He added that the much awaited Gran Turismo for the handheld might appear this year.

Lastly, the official somewhat placed his faith on Xbox 360 as he mentioned that the console will see continued growth this year, with around 4 to 5 million new users "jumping in." Currently, the installed user base of 360 in U.S. is at 5 million.

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2007 is now over and here comes the aftermath: Lazard Capital Markets reports that Sony was the "comeback story" of the recently concluded conference.

The research firm's Colin Sebastian mentioned that the Playstation Portable (PSP) is now moving on the right track and the PlayStation 3 (PS3) is finally becoming stable. According to the analyst,

PlayStation Home could represent an important milestone for Sony as it seeks to build a stronger community for PS3 owners, as well as narrow the gap with Microsoft's Xbox Live, which is already a popular and more established online service.

Moving on to the PSP side of things, Sebastian didn't specifically comment on PSP2 but mentioned that there's a big possibility that Sony will revamp the handheld system. He remarked, "Sony could be preparing to bolster the PSP handheld market with a shift in marketing towards a younger demographic, possibly including a hardware price cut later this year."

Sebastian helpfully added that the way to go is to have stronger software lineup and hardware price cut. Then, the analyst went on and discussed the continued momentum of Nintendo, with its consoles Wii and DS. According to him, Nintendo draws its strength from the support of many publishers and developers.

Lastly, regarding Microsoft, Sebastian believes that the company has a lot of things going for them like the high user usage of Xbox Live as well as upcoming giant video games Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto 4. He marveled at the current services being offered with the console. "The Xbox is one of the few 'living room' devices that can store and play digital media such as TV and movies that are directly downloaded over the Internet."