Famed Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter projects the price and sales figures for Microsoft’s Project Natal.

If you have ever read anything online to do with a big games industry launch projecting prices, sales and success, chances are Pach-man has also thrown in his two-cents somewhere. A regular panelist on Gametrailers.com’s Bonus Round feature and now with his own slot, the “Pach-attach” on the website, Michael Pachter has made a name for himself as a rather successful games industry analyst. Sure, he gets things wrong, thats the nature of his job, at the same time he is often very good at it. This week he offered an insight into how much Project Natal will sell for and how well it will do.

Speaking over the weekend he said:

“My guess is, talking to my hardware specialist colleagues at Wedbush, it’s about $50 in cost.”

“I’d be very surprised if the thing is more then $79, and I really think it’s going to be $50. Microsoft’s not trying to make money on the device, trying to get everybody to have the device so that they can sell us other things, eventually can sell us a lot more Xbox 360s.”

“My call is $50, I think that’s where it’s going to be launched.”

He went on to say that he believes Natal will sell around 10 million units in its first year and will, in the long-run outsell Sony’s “Arc” controller 5-1.

Confident statements indeed. as usual only time will tell, thankfully Project Natal will be on sale before the end of the year and we can all judge its worth for ourselves.