Michael Pachter isn’t a fan of the Wii U. He made that clear a while ago, and has been arguing his case ever since. The latest Pachter-ism that will surely get him the attention he wants, comes from the latest issue of EGM magazine. EGM — Electronic Gaming Monthly — has a large Wii U preview, and it seems quite biased against the new console, to say the least. For example, they state that the Wii U GamePad “feels like a toy”, and claim that the touchscreen feels “finicky”, and even criticize the Wii U Pro controller for looking like an Xbox 360 controller. Which it’s almost meant to be — it’s just a standard game controller. In fact, the EGM article seems surprisingly biased against the Wii U, considering that it’s been a somewhat-neutral publication for a while now.
To top it off, EGM interviews Michael Pachter and gets his opinion on the Wii U, and that’s when things start to get even more interesting. We’ll just post what Pachter said:
“Nintendo is partying like it’s 1985. Their strategy is ‘We got lucky with the Wii, so if we just try something different, we’ll get lucky again. In their vocabulary, the word ‘lucky’ doesn’t exist-substitute ‘brilliant.’ Unfortunately I don’t think it [the Wii U] looks brilliant.”
Pachter added that Nintendo “just doesn’t get it” when it comes to gaming today, and that the company would “rather have you play with Miis” than create an online multiplayer component. Finally, he concludes by saying that Nintendo thinks they know consumers better than everybody else, and that they’ll keep making mistakes like the Wii U until “somebody decides to make a change at the top”, referring to replacing Nintendo president Satoru Iwata and other Nintendo executives.
We’re not going to get into details about Pachter’s comments, he has made it perfectly clear that he doesn’t believe in the Wii U, and occasionally simply trolls Nintendo fans with his comments. He’s an analyst and he’s paid to have an opinion. But analysts like him usually err on the side of “caution” when it comes to predicting the sales and popularity of new hardware. It’s better to predict less sales and be positively surprised, than the other way around. Hopefully a year from now, Pachter and other Wii U critics will eat their words. Just like they did with the original Wii console.
