Well, his job doesn't souly concern video games for one. Shows like Pach Attack he doesn't even get paid for. He's an analyst for Wedbush Securities.

Yes, his sales predictions are often off, but I find he's entertaining to listen to and I enjoy his insight on to things.

I think Pachter's latest, regarding PS4 crossing Wii U by April/May is a quite reasonable prediction, based on what we've seen so far, and that is what he's paid to do. His "I don't know why Iwata is still employed" comment at the beginning of December, however, is not.

But he did make a few interesting predictions at the time, though - like the next generation of consoles being the last, (only model updates instead of new consoles) and there being renewed interest in the PC in the future.

What we see from him around the web is just the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot more serious work that goes on in that kind of job. I suspect most of the apparent subjective bias is just there for show.

He is advertising Wedbush quite well. That is why he keeps doing it, and thats also why he doesnt get fired.

His payed job is to give consulting to investors who are looking for wich titles to invest on. His actual work is based on the instant moment he is beeing hired and is based on the US market only. He does not make proper acessments of the market as a whole, he just gives you the general consesus of what people think in the US accompanied by financial results presented by the companies.

Him answering questions and drilling a new one on Nintendo and the Vita is only so he gets publicity.

To be honest, FF XIII had little to nothing to do with 360 dominating USA.

You assume that his main job is to talk about these things publicly. It's not.

His main job is as an analyst for publishers, etc. And you can bet that his behind-closed-doors analyses are different from the ones he presents publicly. His secondary job is PR, probably for the same clients that he's giving the analyses to. I'm fairly confident that one of his clients is a western third-party publisher, and that this client is the one that is influencing his public comments. I'm not sure which one, though. I'm about 90% confident that it isn't MS or Sony (and 100% confident that it isn't Nintendo).

As others have said, stop giving him attention. Ever seen that Halloween Simpsons episode where the advertisements come to life? "Just don't look".

because he is smart and does his job well

Why does any analyst gets paid?

He's been reasonable of late regarding the Wii U, but more often than not, he's dead wrong, and he has an anti-Nintendo bias that an "analyst" should not have. For example, he predicted that the PSP would outsell the DS, the Vita would outsell the 3DS, that the Wii would fail, and that we would see a Wii HD in 2009 iirc. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. He predicted that the Wii U would fail, and so far, it has (though I guess it's coming back at least somewhat outside of Europe). So he finally got one right by betting against Nintendo EVERY time.

lol, nope.  Here's a sample of his "genius" predictions:

http://www.examiner.com/article/top-10-bad-predictions-from-gaming-analysts

http://vita.mmgn.com/News/PS-Vita-will-outsell-3DS-analyst