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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Master analyst, Michael Pachter, predicts that Switch will not sell near Wii.

couchmonkey on 11 July 2017

I keep hearing Switch is too expensive, but the truth is, if it's sold out all the time, then it's definitely not too expensive!

If Nintendo can maintain a strong pipeline of games (I am impressed with the monthly first party releases and there are a few excellent third party picks too), then I think 50 million is more like the bottom for the Switch than the top, and Wii is well within reach.

Next year will probably be the point where we get clear evidence as to where Switch will land, right now the supply issues are muddying things, and it's looking unlikely to fix them before the holiday season gets here.



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JWeinCom on 11 July 2017

Wow. Really going out on a limb there.



NintendoPie on 11 July 2017

I hope people are realizing they're agreeing with a man who made his assumption based on a linear amount of sales over the Switch's lifespan. As we all should know, consoles don't sell 10 million every year for five years and to think the only way the Switch can get to 100 million is to sell 20 million every year for five years is complete stupidity. The Wii didn't do that, the DS didn't do that. That's not how this works.



Alby_da_Wolf on 11 July 2017
RolStoppable said:

It's the normal course for bad predictions. When someone is horribly wrong, they tend to make adjustments in steps because they aren't ready to admit that they have no clue. From January 17th:

http://fortune.com/2017/01/17/nintendo-switch-sales/

"Zelda, Mario, and Splatoon titles are expected in 2017, but only a handful of new games are expected at launch," Pachter said. "Western third party support appears limited to ports of Xbox 360 and [PlayStation 3] games. We think that hardware sales will be limited without substantially greater third party support."

Looking ahead, Pachter told investors that Nintendo should sell 1 million Switch units in its current fiscal year ended March, and another 4 million units in its next full fiscal year. He cautioned, however, that Nintendo might have some difficulty look further ahead.

This means that in real time Switch is already roughly nine months ahead of Michael Pachter's schedule. Investors who listened to Pachter will vow to never listen to him again as Nintendo's stock has been climbing steadily on the back of strong Switch sales.

Now in his updated prediction* Pachter assumes a lifecycle of five years when every successful Nintendo system, except the GBA due to unique circumstances, enjoyed at least six years on the market before a successor launched. Pachter is an analyst who simply doesn't care about video game history.

*Apparently this isn't the first update he made, because the article notes that Pachter previously said that Switch could sell more units than the Xbox One this year.

As he hasn't been fired yet, it's very likely that he gives the right professional advices to investors that pay his company fees for his services.
Updating his predictions is part of his job, anyway.
Maybe, besides giving paying investors the right advices, he deliberately adorns them with outlandish analyses, so that not paying public can't use them and his clients themselves neither, if they stop paying him to have the conclusions.



Stwike him, Centuwion. Stwike him vewy wuffly! (Pontius Pilate, "Life of Brian")
A fart without stink is like a sky without stars.
TGS, Third Grade Shooter: brand new genre invented by Kevin Butler exclusively for Natal WiiToo Kinect. PEW! PEW-PEW-PEW!   


Alby_da_Wolf on 11 July 2017
RolStoppable said:
Alby_da_Wolf said:

As he hasn't been fired yet, it's very likely that he gives the right professional advices to investors that pay his company fees for his services.
Updating his predictions is part of his job, anyway.
Maybe, besides giving paying investors the right advices, he deliberately adorns them with outlandish analyses, so that not paying public can't use them and his clients themselves neither, if they stop paying him to have the conclusions.

Maybe. It's certainly possible that his paid analyses are reasonable while in public he acts like a clown.

But I prefer the theory that he keeps his job because numerous big third party publishers pay him to write Nintendo off and then they show these "professional" analyses to their own investors in order to justify not developing any games for Nintendo. It's quite common that the advice Pachter proposes to console manufacturers mirrors what third parties want.

LOL, this is twisted, and I wouldn't ascribe such mind-set to most third parties. To EA yes, their management is a bunch of weirdos, and without all those overmilked sports licenses they'd have long sunk.



Stwike him, Centuwion. Stwike him vewy wuffly! (Pontius Pilate, "Life of Brian")
A fart without stink is like a sky without stars.
TGS, Third Grade Shooter: brand new genre invented by Kevin Butler exclusively for Natal WiiToo Kinect. PEW! PEW-PEW-PEW!   


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Alkibiádēs on 11 July 2017
RolStoppable said:
Alby_da_Wolf said:

As he hasn't been fired yet, it's very likely that he gives the right professional advices to investors that pay his company fees for his services.
Updating his predictions is part of his job, anyway.
Maybe, besides giving paying investors the right advices, he deliberately adorns them with outlandish analyses, so that not paying public can't use them and his clients themselves neither, if they stop paying him to have the conclusions.

Maybe. It's certainly possible that his paid analyses are reasonable while in public he acts like a clown.

But I prefer the theory that he keeps his job because numerous big third party publishers pay him to write Nintendo off and then they show these "professional" analyses to their own investors in order to justify not developing any games for Nintendo. It's quite common that the advice Pachter proposes to console manufacturers mirrors what third parties want.

Pachter is a consultant, not an analyst. I'll quote someone from Reddit (he explains it better than I ever could):

"He's not an analyst, he's a consultant. His primary job is to convince businesses to give him money. Usually so he can tell executives stuff that everyone else knows and is trying to tell them, but they refuse to listen.

Pachter mostly bullshits to convince executives he knows what he is talking about. He doesn't give a shit if he is right. The executives don't pay close enough attention to keep track of his record. They just think "that's the consultant everyone asks for predictions, he must be good."

Analysts use actually science, statistics, and data to provide insight.

Consultants for the most parts are a big scam/liability. They are more motivated to make sure they keep getting work and less motivated to fix problems.

If a consultant fixes all your problems he's out of a job and it is hard to get references too. A business doesn't want to tell a competitor "this consulting company is amazing, they fixed everything to the point where we don't need him anymore."

So instead what you'll often see is consultants try to worm their way into the structure, impede communications, and make the business processes unnecessarily dependent on them. It might be far better for Group A and Group B to communicate directly, but a consultant or contractor will insist they facilitate all communications. They provide some initial knowledge to gain trust and over time become parasites."




"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" - Thoukydides

Lawlight on 12 July 2017

Anyone here thinks Pachter is wrong on this one?



AltarofKez on 06 November 2021
Lawlight said:

Anyone here thinks Pachter is wrong on this one?

Maybe.



Let's Play

Leynos on 06 November 2021
AltarofKez said:
Lawlight said:

Anyone here thinks Pachter is wrong on this one?

Maybe.

Possibly.



Bite my shiny metal cockpit!

Illusion on 06 November 2021
AltarofKez said:
Lawlight said:

Anyone here thinks Pachter is wrong on this one?

Maybe.

Actually Pachter originally predicted that the Switch (NX at the time) would top out at 30 million.  The unfortunate thing was that many people back in 2015/2016 (maybe even a majority on this site) thought that Pachter was being overly optimistic with the 30M prediction.  I remember wishing that the 30M figure would be true because the Wii U seemed to be a universe away from reaching that level of sales.

You can even see in mid-2017 just how gun-shy people were towards the success of the Switch.  There really aren't many people attacking Pachter's 50 million prediction on this thread even despite his infamous record of making horrible predictions.  I mean, it was clear by this point in 2017 that the Switch was not going to be a failure in anyway and was on track to do much better than the Wii U, but the Wii U era was such a dark one that people even on this site were hesitant to get overly optimistic about Nintendo being able to break 50M sales in the home console market.  The general consensus during the Wii U era was that the Wii was the outlier and that every Nintendo home console is doomed to sell less than the previous one and it has taken quite a while for that misconception to be shaken off.