Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft Have You in the Palms of their Hands

[This is a guest post from one of our senior forum moderators, Matt Costello. Get to know him in person on the forums. (Mattavelle1)]

I have a theory. Just a theory, but bear with me. This theory of mine is more about control, money, and manipulation than anything else (but I’ll run the gauntlet, as this involves many interrelated topics).

About 6 months ago, I went to visit my in-laws, wife and child in tow. I’m actually really tight with my father-in-law (henceforth known as FIL), despite not having anything in common with him. Well, except for a few things (which we found out in due course). Before I married into this family, I didn’t know the first thing about the stock market, whereas my wife’s side of the family was deep into it. Despite being a blue-collar guy with no high-school degree, FIL is quite brilliant at the trade. I wasn’t raised in a stock-trading family, but FIL’s father-in-law (my mother-in-law’s father) taught him all about it, so there’s our connection.

So I’m sitting in the living room with FIL, and we were talking and watching the ticker on the TV (still not something that excites me), when something on the screen catches my eye. FIL stops the conversation and says, “This guy is really sharp. If you want to know what moves to make in the video game market, you’d best listen to him.” Who is this, allegedly the sharpest tool in the shed? Michael (expletive deleted) Pachter...

http://nintendoenthusiast.com/article/nintendo-sony-microsoft-wii-ps4-xbone/

I'm surprised this isn't in this forum... Has to be read in full to understand and than we can discuss. I had my fear about this...

Control and manipulation is used in almost every aspect of this life here on earth.

Understandable. But as always, if this goes out of hands, it can criples any industry... We already got the colapse of the world economie and still not out of it. -_-

We where wrong all along... Michael Patcher is... an Analyst...

Sadly a lot of this is true.

This would all be stopped if there was a proper industry watchdog who banned console manufacturers from selling consoles at a loss. It is dumping and incredibly anti-consumer. Sadly, the manufacturers have developed this pathetic "console war" so that consumers are too busy fighting between themselves to see the awful business practices being carried out by the corporations.

Things is, we were being played, it was in our face, but we were too busy taking the fight in the so called "console wars"...

Since Michael Patcher showed up in forums, I will admit, I was swept by his rubbish claims. It took me a good time to realize that just about everything he said just makes us as fans want to get riled up. And didn't want to be a part of it... I knew something was not right at the time and got me pondering what was his end game. The things I come up in my head made think I was loosing it and thought he can't be this sly. I was just too naive at the time. After reading this basically comfirmed what I thought, I just couldn't believe that it was in such a grand scale...

As an ol'chap who who's studying (actually postponed, but at least try to keep up) economics, I felt like a young, naive and ignorant lad that never would've pictured such scheme. : /

It does support the "third parties against Nintendo" conspiracy theory

Honestly, some of us have always known this about Pachter. I think he's awesome. If you watch his show, you can see that he mixes in a lot of trolling but that he also has solid sources much of the time. People think of his long term guesses and short term analysis the same way when they are not. On the investor side, he's obviously good at his job. On the "getting people to watch his show," he's also very good at his job.

As for the industry, yep, it's a business alright. Fans have some pretty silly ideas of how business is conducted, sometimes. Even this article underestimates that, though, as it talks about the pre-Playstation period as being "innocent", when really that was when Nintendo was the most cut-throat.

gamestop will be really bad after this christmas confirmed

Dude, you can't just take away the raison d'etre from pretty much the whole VGC community.

They need the war as a juckie needs a fix. And they feel good once they manage to 'argument' that their side is teh best.