Activision to have a hard time in the coming fiscal year, says Pachter

Despite the unprecedented success of the Guitar Hero franchise, Wedbush Morgan's resident gaming wiseman Michael Pachter decided to cast some doubts over Activision's possibility of being able to increase revenues even further, due to a few factors that stand in Activision's way: namely, MTV and Harmonix's Rock Band, among other things.

According to Pachter, Activision is unlikely to surpass US 350 million for the upcoming fiscal year's overseas earnings, way below the gaming market's potential to absorb US 650 million in rhythm and music games. The reason is that the market is effectively split between Guitar Hero and its rival franchise, Rock Band.

Another reason is that the future releases of Guitar Hero will be in game discs only, as opposed to the money-raking game and hardware (guitar controller) bundles that sold merrily along in the recent holiday season. "We believe that the success of its lineup this holiday creates a formidable hurdle to revenue growth," said Pachter.