As an analyst, Mr. Pachter probably works studying and predicting the performance of a few companies. I think the stated he evaluates something like six companies, which includes EA and Activision, reason why he's often cited by the gaming press. As an analyst his performance will be evaluated by how his advise matches the outcome of the stock prices. Probably, he's working exclusively with companies traded at the New York Stock Market or NASDAQ and thus, he knowledge of Nintendo is not as deep as other American companies.

I don't know much about his performance as an analyst but it bugs me he often presents himself more like some sort of gaming industry guru giving a lot of wild predictions about nearly anything. This is not uncommon among analysts. As they have very little to loose (missed predictions are usually forgotten after a while), the often give wild ones as, if they hit the mark, they will become instantly famous and, therefore, they will be able to charge more for the services.

In the end, I will give Mr. Pachter the same credit as I give most famous stock analysts, that is, not much.

The problem I have with this line of thinking is that there is absolutely no evidence that mobile phones have impacted Nintendo at all; after all the DS sold over 150 million units dwarfing the sales of all previous handheld systems, saw its biggest years well after the iPhone launched, and the 3DS has become the fastest selling dedicated videogame system ever.

Certainly, the iPhone has impacted the market but I think it has done something substantially different than what most analysts are claiming. What has done is converted many non-gamers and very lite-gamers into people who regularly play videogames, and made videogames a greater portion of the typical gamers life. In the process it has increased the market for more indepth gameplay experiences and increased the interest in more dedicated gaming machines. If the market shifts and people are more willing to spend $10 to $20 on iPhone games I would start to think that Nintendo is in trouble; until then, the damage done by smartphones has been greatly overstated.

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/77424/Is-it-Game-Over-for-Nintendo-DS-and-Sony-PSP

156M iOS devices sold in a single year will certainly have an impact on the gaming market. They will come from the low end and likely take their brain training/Nintendogs market out from under them. A large proportion of the Nintendo handheld game market is addressable with iOS devices, hence the problem of simplicity and gameplay overriding complexity.

A smaller piece of a bigger pie may still be more pie ... While companies may want a bigger piece of pie, they really just want more pie

Mmmmm Pie

Is that only DS or DS+3DS?

That will be a stupid comparision if it's only DS.

Yes. If Nintendo let them do that they will. So far Nintendo hasn't even tried to cater to the people you talk about. They simply ignored them. Nintendo losing the mass market is not caused by smartphones it is caused by Nintendo not catering to the mass market anymore. What mass market games have they put out so far for 3DS? Nintendogs? Yeah at launch when there were no games, the system was completely overpriced and Nintendo focused on the 3D aspect of the console. Ironically Nintendogs is selling quite well right now. But there are no other games in that vein yet. Also the original DS was priced at $129 at this point in its life while the 3DS is $169 and the videogaming market is highly price sensitive.

Also low end customers are defined by Christensen as "customers who want the least features and are willing to pay the lowest price". Most smartphones are way more expensive than gaming handhelds (especially the contracts) and totally overshoot people who play games like Brain Training. Do you really think people in their 50s and 60s (the core market for Brain Training games) or parents buying gifts for their children will buy iPhones over a 3DS? The core market for smartphones are obviously people in their 20's to 30's who want to surf the web all day who can afford expensive products. Ironically... that's the Vita's audience.

Edit: And I'm really sorry you get quoted like mad right now. I just think it's worth pointing these things out.

Nintendo's recent losses are quite telling aren't they? If they still had strong software revenues they wouldn't be posting such losses now would they? Not enough pie IMO.

My task was to have my pie and eat it too. Your task was to make some kind of witty response, I have obviously succeeded in spite of your failure.

um the iphone 4s moved 37 million units in Q1, shitting on anything the 3DS did, higher price and all, so yes.  The device is simple enough so people in their 50s and 60s (the demographic least likely to have a cellphone) can easly adapt and have a device that does everything they need, without the need to carry anything else.  Saying that smartphones are for 20s and 30s is just asinine.

Selling their system for 70% of what they expected to sell it for, and having the yen increase from 120 yen to 70 yen per US dollar obviously had nothing to do with that ...

The fact is that Nintendo has seen remarkably strong sales in their mobile platform througout the rise of the smartphones. If smartphones were really cutting into Nintendo's market we would not have seen this.

Well its kind of hard to post revenue numbers from companies that are not public, which a lot of indie publishers for ios and android are.  You can look at the deverlopers who are public who support both platforms and will find that sales have been steady for their mobile platforms and have collapsed for the DS and PSP, EA IR is a good example.  And the revenue declines occured during the height of the DS in 2009.