Nintendo president Satoru Iwata may not like hardware price cuts, but analysts are expecting Nintendo to drop the Wii's price even lower before the holiday season. More after the jump.

Did you have yourself a Mario little Christmas? (I can hear you groaning.) Analyst Jesse Divnich says that "Nintendo saved Christmas," with Wii sales on an all-time high for December. Without these sales, he says, the industry would have felt "the full wrath of the recession."

A new report from Electronic Entertainment Design and Research shows that games on Nintendo's Wii are more easily subjected to price reductions than games for PS3 and Xbox 360. EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich shares his thought on the factors that bring a price down.

Analyst Jesse Divnich is making yet another bold claim, saying that music games like Guitar Hero have reached their peak in popularity and can only go down from here on out.

More Divnich wisdom in the full article.

With the state of the economy as it is, people keep throwing the question, is the games industry recession proof? Well not entirely, not according to some analysts at least, who believe that certain game titles will have disappointing sales.

Analyst Jesse Divnich, who made a booboo predicting that the Xbox 360 price cut will affect sales of the PlayStation 3, now wants to make another point: console exclusives decrease sales of competing consoles. Interesting. More after the link.

Ahead of the NPD data once again is everyone's favorite video game analyst, Michael Pachter. As usual, Pachter pegs the Wii to be the clear winner for last month, selling twice as much as the PlayStation 3. For now, he also predicts that the PS3 will sell more than the Xbox 360, though he may change his tune next month when the 360's price cut will start to show in sales.

Sony's pretty confident that they don't need a price cut at all, even though Microsoft slashed down the Xbox 360's Arcade model below even the Wii's pricetag. Analyst Jesse Divnich (once again) warns that Sony should reconsider its stance, or it will land on last place again this holiday season - and even the Wii may have cause to worry as well. Only a little bit though. More in the full article.

Jesse Divnich is forecasting that for this year's holiday season, the PS3 might be bowing down to the Xbox 360, while the NIntendo Wii need not be worried of anything at all. His forescasts seem to hinge on the fact that the Xbox 360 is getting a price cut - which, by the way, he previously predicted and proved to be right on the money. Maybe this time around, his predictions might hold water as well? Read more of his insights in the full article.

Over at the other side of the Atlantic, some game industry observers have expressed concern that the launch of Nintendo's Wii Fit may offset the sales of Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto IV (Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3). Analyst Jesse Divnich begs to differ, though. He says there may be a bit of a hit early, but things shouldn't be as rough as some may think. Details in the full article.