Ah, marketing analysts you have got to love their predictions. Michael Pachter, infamous analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities and also known as a nefarious internet troll to gamers the world around, let loose some more nasty comments about Nintendo and the Wii U, saying that the company is in disarray and that the Wii U won't save them.
The blurb comes courtesy of NeoGaf [via Just Push Start] where Pachter states that...
Nintendo is in disarray because they waited too long to launch the Wii U. I know that this sounds like (and is) sour grapes because they didn't launch the Wii HD in 2009 or 2010 as I "predicted". They should have, and because they didn't, the decline in Wii and DS hardware and software sales drove them into generating LOSSES. For those of you who aren't financial analysts, losses mean that the company is worth less than it was before. Nintendo stock has dropped by over 80% in the last few years, and the market has appreciated over the same period. I'm paid to advise investors, and none have made a profit owning Nintendo stock. I don't think that many will make a profit over the next few years, because I don't think Nintendo's strategy will return them to profitability.
Ouch.
The Wii U is the only "next-generation" console launching this year, which does give them a leg up on the competition. Nintendo has also fervently stood by its claims that the console will reinvigorate the core audience that they lost during the dominating years the Wii was on the market, saying that the Wii U will capture a different kind of market. A lot of people feel that Nintendo is losing steam since they posted losses throughout 2011 and Pachter believes that the company has missed their mark with the Wii U, saying...
I believe (and please feel free to disagree) that a large portion of the Wii audience comprised casual gamers--those who bought one or two games a year the first two years, then put the Wii aside--and that those casual gamers moved on to another platform. The "other" platform may have been Facebook games, smart phone games, tablet games, or one of the other consoles, but once they moved on, they are not likely to come back.
He's actually right about the Wii's attachment rate and home usage. A lot of third-party publishers dropped support for the Wii throughout 2011 and the system hasn't seen a lot of hard-hitting exclusives from big publishers in quite some time. Pachter's comments also follow suit from a recent interview back in January where he basically reiterated the same thing, saying how Nintendo is living in the past and that they can't possibly garner success with the Wii U and its WiiPad tablet.
Nintendo, however, surprised everyone during this generation of gaming by actually taking the lead with the Wii and innovating the industry with motion-controlled gaming. The Wii U plans to go a step further by incorporating near-field communication capabilities as well as enable gamers to make microtransaction purchases directly through the WiiPad tablet device. Nintendo has also secured quite a bit of third-party support for the Wii U's launch, with a number of hard-hitting, big budget games due out this fall. Nintendo is also seeing quite the success with the 3DS, which is starting to turn a major profit for the company, according to Maximum PC.
I guess we'll be able to tell if Pachter is right or not come this holiday season when Nintendo finally goes head-to-head with their naysayers.
