| vivster said: Lol. Pachter isn't getting paid for his public statements. He does this for fun when somebody asks him about it. He didn't even get paid for the Pach Attack on Gametrailers. He doesn't need PR. He's fucking rich and famous in his field anyway. He's a gamer and his job involves following some of the bigger gaming companies on the market. Not all of them but a few. Nintendo is not among them, that's why he has the least insight into them. If you follow him and listen to his statements about the industry and not just read the numbers he says every month you will see where he is coming from and why he is constantly underestimating the Wii U. BTW, he also doesn't give a shit about early VGC numbers ;) |
First of all, I didn't say a word about VGC. Not sure why you brought that up.
Second of all, Pachter isn't just an enthusiast expressing his opinion. He has a show dedicated to his opinion on a major gaming media site, he expresses his opinion alongside "predictions" that are associated with his company (Wedbush), and he's the head of research at his company, which miraculously releases their predictions that align perfectly with his expressed opinions every time.
And as I said, Wedbush is an analysis company - their clients pay them for analyses. Any information they release publicly is suspect to begin with (this is different in the context of tracking groups like NPD, where they're paid to collect the data, not to provide the data - that is, companies who benefit from knowing sales numbers pay NPD to collect the data, there's no need to then restrict access to all of the results - and notice that NPD are limited in how much they release publicly, too).
Pachter and his company are engaging in PR. It's pretty damn obvious - it's been obvious for the last 8 years. And it's not just about accuracy of Wii/Wii U predictions. It's everything. At the start of 2008, Pachter said that, in that year, the PS3 would start outselling the Wii.
One of the big flags is that he spends an inordinate amount of time arguing that consoles need price cuts to drive sales, while ignoring software that has always been the driving force behind sales. Gamers mostly already own the systems, so it's not benefiting them. Despite knowing the power of Mario Kart and Smash Bros, Pachter asserted that a PS3 price cut to $300 would happen some time within 2008, and would start outselling the Wii at that point (ignoring the fact that Nintendo could more easily drop the Wii's price given that it was selling at a large profit by that time if their sales started to weaken).
Now ask yourself - who benefits from PS3 getting a price cut, other than gamers who hadn't already bought in? Remember, the PS3 would be selling at a huge loss at that price. So who benefits? That's right - third party publishers, who get a lot more people to sell their games to, without having to compete against first-party games that drive sales.
Of course, I could be wrong. But I can't see how the head of research for an analysis company could make such bad predictions with such regularity.
But then, let's suppose you're right, and it's purely his personal opinion, for which he receives no money whatsoever. How does that make his opinion any more valuable than mine or yours? Why should this man, who frequently gets things wrong, get so much attention from the gaming media?
In short, either way, the media should stop listening to him.
