There has been some extremely odd behavior from “Michael Pachter” lately. I am actually getting worried about him. He is running the risk of turning Wedbush into a joke and harming the careers of the staff that work there.
It is extremely odd behavior for an ‘analyst’ to become a TV show host on a lowly watched video website. It is extremely odd behavior for any analyst to publicly argue with the executive heads of a company about the company’s plans for their next product. It is extremely odd behavior for an ‘analyst’ to dismiss best selling business books (e.g. Blue Ocean Strategy, Innovator’s Dilemma) in favor for buzzwords (“casual”, “hardcore”). It is extremely odd behavior for an ‘analyst’ to write long threads on gaming message forums and even say things that everyone knows is outright false (more on this below).
Sincerely, Pachter’s behavior has been very odd lately… odd even for Pachter. His behavior doesn’t fit an ‘analyst’ anymore. His behavior now fits that of the ‘activist’. Instead of being intent on analyzing events, his behavior is geared toward shaping events.
The game journalists who are stenographers to everything Pachter says or emails aren’t even bothering to do any fact checking (hence, the ‘stenographer’ description).
Check out these strange and bizarre quotes:
Pachter says that piracy — plus a new mobile platform in town — might also be weakening the DS. “It appears that piracy in Europe and some substitution of iPod Touch games has impacted DS software sales more than we expected,” says Pachter.
These ‘casual gamers’ are an amazing type of gamer. I mean, they are so stupid and dumb that they cannot play ‘real games’. Yet, they can pirate games the ‘real gamers’ still don’t really know how to do. The 14 year old pigtail girl will look at Ubisoft’s “Babiez” game and go, “I am not going to pay for that! I am going to go to my computer, do some elite hacking, and pirate it!” These ‘casuals’ are just incredible.
Have you also noticed an amazing coincidence how every time discussion of third party games and Nintendo comes up, the third party companies are always innocent. Always. Nothing is ever a third party company’s fault. It is such an incredible coincidence.
Anyone who has been following the DS knows there is piracy. There is piracy on all the platforms. There has been piracy since the first video game console. And piracy will continue in the future.
Pachter expects the pressure on Nintendo to continue, he explains: “We think that lower pricing on the PS3 and Xbox 360 will provide consumers with a more difficult choice when considering a new console.”
The Wii’s gone from being $350 less expensive than the PlayStation 3 to just $100, for example, says Pachter, “with the feature-laden PS3 a tempting purchase for prospective console households.”
This is an absolute lie. The Xbox 360 has been at the same price or cheaper than the Wii in various territories. Yet, the lower price did not cause people to rush out and buy the system.
PS3 has many features. Unfortunately, they are not video game features. PS3 already had the Slim and major price cuts. Aside from a temporary boost, none of this has changed anything in the market. Pachter’s behavior in being a PS3 advocate is very un-analyst behavior. This is why people no longer respect Michael Pachter and increasingly see him as a joke.
“The holiday Wii sales boost was primarily attributable to a $50 gift card promotion offered by Wal-Mart,” he asserts. “While we expect similar promotions at holiday next year, we expect the other consoles to be lower-priced by then, further eroding the Wii’s competitive price advantage.”
Then why did Wii sales skyrocket in other territories that did not have Wal-Mart? Pachter is not interested in answering. He “asserts” himself like a bear “asserts” itself when cornered. Everyone knows that Mario 5 was a big driver in the Wii sales boost.
I didn’t even know about any Wal-Mart promotion. It certainly wasn’t well advertised. Note that the company that does heavy promotions and coupons on its console is Microsoft. Xbox 360 was heavily price promoted with special ‘deals’. Yet, Pachter makes no mention of this. Why?
In his NeoGAF thread, Pachter writes:
The conclusion I draw from this is that the Wii audience is far more casual and harder to reach than the PS3 or 360 audiences (pretty obvious), and they buy brand name software (with “Wii” or “Mario” in the title, or with a TV/product tie-in). The only titles that don’t fit this are Deca Sports and Game Party. The average selling price of third party titles says a lot, coming in almost $7 below the average for all Wii titles, and almost $18 below first party titles. There were a lot of units sold with the word “party” in the title at $20 or less.
I made a comment on Bonus Round that half the Wii audience is hard core and half is purely casual. That split sounds pretty agressive, and the data above suggests it’s more like 25/75.
Given that NeoGAF is a hard core site, I’m curious to hear your spin. What should publishers do?
If his name wasn’t Michael Pachter, he would have been banned for trolling. Talk about kicking a dead horse of a subject talked about into the ground.
The answer is to not talk to the hardcore. The answer is to talk to the Expanded Audience. Since I am a member of the Expanded Audience, let me give you the answer:
There is no such thing as First Party Games and Third Party Games. Those are Industry terms. That is not the consumer perspective. The consumer perspective is First Rate Games and Third Rate Games. Consumers do not buy every game that is heavily marketed by Nintendo. Look at the sales of Wii Music for example or Animal Crossing Wii. The massive sales of Mario 5 proves that people do not buy games simply because it has Mario in the name. If it was, all these people would have bought Super Mario Galaxy.
It is incredible that the Expanded Audience keeps being talked about as if they are martians from another planet. Why not go ask them?
It should be clear now that even Pachter doesn’t even believe what he is saying. He is not “stupid”. He is intentionally saying these things for a purpose that is more activist rather than analytic.
I actually think Michael Pachter is imploding. I don’t think he can take how people are laughing at him and how everyone is rejecting what he says. While it is annoying to go to any game website and see him quoted, the more he talks the more he is destroying his reputation and the reputation of Wedbush.
