Who Is In Favor of Banning Pachter-Quotes?

[MDMAlliance]

gergroy said:

Aielyn said:

gergroy said:
He's a real analyst that works for a pretty prestigious firm. There isn't any reason to ban his quotes. He isn't right all the time, but any time you are trying to predict the future you are bound to be wrong some of the time.   

The thing is, he's wrong far more often than he's right, and never admits to errors.

Tell me - does a world-class chef offer their best food for free as a regular event? Does a musician wanting to sell CDs give their CDs away for free to 99% of the public? Does an ad-supported commercial TV channel provide easy access to an ad-free free-to-air stream of their content?

Pachter may be a skilled analyst. It's entirely possible. But the fact that he's releasing these claims publicly for free when his job is to provide analyses to businesses tells me that what he's saying publicly has no real value. If we assume that his public statements aren't actually PR (the alternative is that he's being paid by a company in the gaming industry to say these things), then his only reason for saying what he says publicly is attention - the more attention the claims get, the more money he gets from advertising, etc.

Think of Pachter's public comments as moonlighting - he makes more money from comments that would be worthless in his normal job. So there's two options: either he's providing FUD for the purpose of PR for a company (likely Activision or EA, if it's anyone), or he's providing grandiose claims in order to gain publicity. Either way, his statements aren't worth anything.

Most of the stories and quotes that come up is because Pachter is one of two primary analysts that look at the game industry.  As such, the gaming journalist are always asking for his opinion on what he thinks of something.  Now, Pachter is not a gamer, he is an analyst, so a lot of what he says is pretty condesending which seems to upset a lot of gamers.  

He says stuff like Call of Duty's story sucks, and Nintendo is failing.  However, people don't seem to understand that isn't saying Nintendo isn't delivering a great gaming experience, he is talking about Nintendo's ability to provide profits.  Sony and Microsoft are large companies that have a lot of things going for them besides games.  Nintendo is just games, as such the emergence of smartphones and mobile gaming will have a much bigger impact on their profit performance than the other two companies.  

These statements then get taken and put in articles, often out of context, and it pisses off gamers.  My point is that Pachter isn't talking to gamers, his work involves previewing stock performance of game companies.  He isn't right all the time, he is often wrong, but that doesn't mean we need to ban his comments.  How many people on this site make bad predictions all the time?  Should we ban people that make bad preditions now?  His comments create discussion, that is the point of these forums, to discuss. 

Also, Pachter does admit all the time when he is wrong, and definitely admits errors, those apoligies aren't gaming news though...

Personally, I like Jesse Divinich better, but I'll still look at what Pachter says. 

If you guys want to understand Pachter a little better, here is a link to an interview he did way back when.  It probably won't make you like him any better, as he is pretty condescending towards games, but you will better understand that he is mostly just focused on how the companies and products perform, rather than how they play.  

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/being-michael-pachter-interview

That interview totally shows how much of a jerk he is in person.