"Exceedingly strong" PS3 performance in 2008, says Hickey

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.