Double Vision? (or) Michael Pachter Confuses the Shit Out of Me

Grand Theft Auto IV is less than a month away at this point and (especially after just finishing Crackdown) all of us here at QPHQ are psyched as, well, as everyone else we suppose. The battle is heating up over where the game is going to end up; Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 were the last two games with similar selling power to be released, the latter of which being one-console exclusive. Grand Theft Auto has always been associated with the Playstation brand, though all previous versions have ended up on Xbox as well as the PC, selling considerably less and finding their way to retail shelves months later. However, this time Microsoft has secured exclusive downloadable content for the newest installment in the franchise as well as pushing marketing strong like bear.

Honestly, in our opinion, things could go either way. We're betting on two-to-one sales or more on the Microsoft side of things, but that's just our humble opinion (having been gaming retailers ourselves on more than one occasion.) Michael Pachter, of Wedbush Morgan Securities, of the analyst breed, has offered his opinion on the subject in more than one instance -- unfortunately his responses somewhat disagree with each other. In the most recent episode of Bonus Round, the GameTrailers.com show hosted by Geoff Keighley (yes, that Geoff Keighley, our hero) Pachter was quoted as saying, regarding which console may bring home the most bacon:

"Perversely, I think it's still coming out for PS3 primarily. And I know there are more 360s out there but....much like Halo has been branded as an Xbox game and now an Xbox 360 game, people who own a 360, who own an Xbox consider it their game. GTA has always been a PS2 game. I think there's a large number of PS2 owners who've been waiting to buy their PS3 until this game comes out. So I think you're gonna see a big spike in PS3 sales."

Keighley, putting Pachter on the spot, asks, "What do you predict for the April sales for PS3 and 360?" Pachter's response was, "Xbox 360 sales will be 350(thousand) and PS3 sales will be 500(thousand). I think it'll be that kind of a difference."

Oddly though, Pachter is claiming quite the opposite to Take-Two, GTAIV's developer, in a recent research report, stating "he expects the company to sell nine million units within the first year of its release, six million of which will be on Xbox." Anyone else confused? We're not exactly high payed economics analysts, but this don't make no sense. Ideas?