Top 10 bad predictions from 'gaming analysts'

It's not easy being a gaming industry analyst.

You slave each day trying to take the temperature of an industry catering to teenagers and adults who, let's face it, don't exactly run in your circle of friends. You have to use that Ivy League education to figure out what the Average Joes (and increasingly, Average Janes) are planning to do with their money.

And then you have to predict how Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Electronic Arts and Activision will cater to those couch-dwellers.

It's enough to make a guy cry himself to sleep on his imported, hand-woven, 1,000-thread-count Egyptian linen pillow.

Sometimes analysts' prognostications earn their keep pretty well, offering opinions that aren't too off the money. When the Wii Fit debuted at E3 2007, for example, gaming journalists left Nintendo's keynote address looking like a bunch of dogs who'd just been shown a card trick. I know. I was one of them.

But analysts knew it was a money-making machine, and they were right.

In some really glaring moments, however, these industry "experts" have offered advice and predictions so imbecilic you have to wonder whether they were sober when they made them.

So in my small effort to add some reason and sensibility to your day, if not a little chuckle, I bring you my personal top 10 favorite wrong predications made by "industry experts" about the current generation of consoles.

And trust me, every single one came from a guy who got paid like a sultan to say it. Let each one stand as proof of how you should never, ever trust anything you read on the internet — especially when it's offered by an "industry analyst."

10. The Playstation 3 will win the next-gen battle:

When Wedbush Morgan Securities' gaming superanalyst Michael Pachter speaks, people listen. Hopefully no one listened when he offered the following prediction in May 2007: "Ultimately, we see Sony winning the console war with 36 percent of the market, with Nintendo capturing second place at 34 percent and Microsoft finishing third at 30 percent." For you kids keeping score, Nintendo's Wii currently holds 48 percent of the console market, followed by the Xbox 360 (30 percent) and the PS3 (22 percent). Given that consumers bought more than twice the number of Wiis as PS3s in the three-plus years of the current console cycle, Sony will have to make up a heck of a lot of ground for Pachter to be right.

9. The next Microsoft and Nintendo consoles will come to market in 2010:

Sure, we're a year off from that prediction being proved either way, but it's a pretty safe bet that we'll be seeing neither a new Xbox nor Wii by the end of next year. The statement was bold enough when Pacific Crest Securities' Evan Wilson said it in February 2008: "We believe that peak industry sales will occur in 2010, given that Microsoft will likely introduce its next console that year and Nintendo will likely launch before then." Since then a lot has changed. While there seems to be little doubt that at least Microsoft is working on the 360's successor (and probably Nintendo on the Wii's), both companies have been hammered by sagging economies in the US and abroad and are not likely to move on from their current consoles out of fear of taking on more debt. Until the proverbial bottom of the downturn becomes evident, you probably won't be seeing anything new out of either company. And if you don't see either announced at this June's E3 expo, this prediction is completely busted.

8. Apple is entering the home-console market:

This one was pretty far fetched from the moment Prudential Securities' Jesse Tortola said it in June 2006. "The game console device could be morphed out of some combination of the MacMini and iTV, while the handheld player could be developed as an enhancement for a future version of the widescreen iPod," Tortola told investors. But it was pretty clear even back then that Apple's big secret wasn't going to be a console. Steve Jobs is no fool, and with three major consoles already in heated battle, only a crazy man would have taken the kind of loss necessary to design, develop, build and distribute an entirely new home console from scratch. Half credit, though, because what Apple was indeed working on was the iPhone, which has now become a pretty significant game-playing device. Though it's not exactly competing with the Nintendo DS, mind you.

7. Midway will have a significantly better year in 2008:

Michael Pachter really isn't that bad an analyst. He's actually one of the better ones. Which goes to prove how wrong you can be and still be the smartest idiot in the village. In 2007, Midway Games was hammered by massive losses and accumulated a mind-blowing amount of debt. But in May last year Pachter said 2008 would be different for Midway. He thought the company would perform "significantly better," adding that he believed it had hit bottom "quite a while ago." Just a few short months later in December, Sumner Redstone sold his 87 percent stake in the company to a private investor for $100,000, or $0.0012 a share. Two months after, it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. While the company is technically still in business, it likely won't survive to the end of this year, as the new owner is already taking bids for intellectual properties like Mortal Kombat in order to cover $240 million in debt.

6. The sale of Take Two to Electronic Arts is looming:

While some predictions were just bad judgment, this whopper was flat out stupid. Mick Hickey of Janco Partners had to have been smoking a large amount of questionable substance when he a told investors he was "convinced [Take-Two] will eventually be acquired at a meaningful premium to their current share price" any moment now. That was in December 2007. And last time we checked, Take Two is still doing business — sans EA. To be fair, EA did offer a very sweet $25.74 a share (the stock is currently trading at just under $9 a share). But full of cash from Grand Theft Auto IV, Take Two was able to spend $11 million to fight off the takeover. After months of threats and (eventually) negotiation, in September EA officially confirmed it had abandoned its bid for Take Two. Maybe this time investors should have listened to Pachter.

5. Sony is considering a Playstation 3 without Blu-Ray:

Every other entry on this list has some time behind it. This prediction, proffered on February 25 by Mike Hickey of Janco (and "EA will buy Take Two" fame) is so beyond reason that I won't wait a year to call it bull. Hickey made this forecast in the same breath as he advised Sony would offer a PS3 price drop "in a few days" — an indication of the quality of this Hickey missive. It's hard to wrap your head around how many things are wrong with the Blu-Ray–less PS3 idea. Sony spent billions developing the PS3, and one of their biggest reasons for doing so was to establish Blu-Ray as the format of choice for the next generation of DVD players. To offer a PS3 without a Blu-Ray would be like Baskin Robbins selling empty cones. Oh yes, and one other small detail: Billions of dollars worth of PS3 games on disk would be made unusable by this new, albeit cheaper, PS3. Sorry, but digital distribution just hasn't come far enough for Sony to get rid of disk drives in their consoles. Maybe for the PS4, but you won't be seeing a PS3 without a Blu-Ray. In other news, Michael Phelps called and he wants his stash back.

4. Microsoft wins, the Revolution will sell 3 million units by 2007, the PSP will beat Nintendo DS sales by 5 million, and 43 million PSPs and DSs will sell by 2009:

Why say one thing and be wrong, when you can say a whole bunch of things and be really, really wrong? Mike Wallace, UBS' lead game analyst (which theoretically means he's the company's top gaming brain) cooked up a hot batch of fresh stinkers one fine January morning in 2006. He did accurately peg that the Gameboy Advance would remain the dominant portable device through the end of the year, but from there on out, his crystal ball was on the fritz. Running down the list: Microsoft was spanked by the "Revolution" — aka: the Wii — 49 million to 29 million units; the Wii sold nearly 20 million units by the end of 2007; for all but one week in 2007 the DS overwhelmingly outsold the PSP; and the PSP and DS combined sales top 150 million, and it's not even the end of 2009.

3. Ticket sales for Iron Man will be affected by GTA IV's launch:

The first weekend after Grand Theft Auto IV launched very little happened but a whole lot of shooting, driving and drinking of vodka with your crazy cousin Roman. But Janco's Mike Hickey went a little overboard and advised owners of Marvel Entertainment stock to brace themselves for the worst: The game could hijack their profits. "We anticipate the video game release of GTA IV on April 29 could dampen the potential from Iron Man’s theatrical release on May 2," he told investors. I sure hope nobody actually listened to Hickey, because that weekend Iron Man sold more than $100 million in North America and another $200 million in international sales, becoming Hollywood's second biggest first-weekend blockbuster for a nonsequel superhero movie.

2. Ken Kutaragi will replace Howard Stringer as head of Sony:

As the father of the Playstation, Sony Computer Entertainment's chief executive Ken Kutaragi demanded a certain amount of respect. Wedbush's Michael Pachter apparently was in a lot more awe of him than Sony in December 2006. When Kutaragi was "promoted" out of Sony Entertainment's daily operations, Pachter said the reason was clear: The company was grooming him to replace Sony chairman and CEO Sir Howard Stringer. "Kutaragi is the visionary, and his work on PS3 was done at launch. They need to groom him to replace Stringer," Pachter told GameDaily. "The rest of the guys are competent, experienced, and loyal. I think each of the other moves made sense. In time, I think you will see Kutaragi given responsibility for other functions, like Blu-ray." As for that prediction: Not only has Stringer kept his job, in April he will additionally become president of Sony Corporation. As for Kutaragi, nobody's really heard from him since.

1. People will bore of World of Warcraft:

Honestly, this isn't a pick-on-Michael Pachter-fest. It's just that when he's wrong he's very, very wrong. In September 2005, Pachter made his worst prediction to date — one that, had anyone listened to, cost them the opportunity of a lifetime. While speaking about the rise of MMOs, he said: "I don't think there are four million people in the world who really want to play online games every month…. eventually it will come back to the mean, maybe a million subscribers." Even back then, a mere five months after launch, it was clear that World of Warcraft was already a monumental force of gaming, raking in more than $700 million. For Pachter to have been right, more than 75 percent of those already playing the game would have had to quit. Instead, as anyone who'd touched it knew would happen, WoW's subscriber base grew to make developer Blizzard and its investors very rich, indeed, and turned WoW into the Google of MMOs. As of last month, WoW has 11.5 million subscribers paying more than $2 billion annually in fees alone.

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WOW I am shocked by some of them!

those analysts got PAID? (Especially PS3 with NO BLU-RAY..how dumb!)

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