It can bomb, it can not bomb, but I still have no current plans on purchasing what I imagine is going to turn out to be a HD Wii. I've got a SD Wii that I am perfectly content with, thank you Nintendo.

Given Sega and Pachter seldom ever beat the odds and Nintendo usually has, I'll side with history on this one

You know, I have an industry leading analyst in my pocket. It's called a quarter, and I flip it to get the same damn results that suits like Pachter get on a daily basis.

I'm not necessarily saying that he's wrong - I just don't understand why he gets paid six figures a year to be right as often as my quarter.

The Wii was weird. The DS was weird. The 3DS was weird in 3D. As long as Nintendo has those core franchises and it's kid friendly they'll survive. I remember every screaming death when Nintendo put the original phat DS up against and the PSP and we all know how that ended.

With the screen on the controller, it might just be. :p

However, people will buy it because Nintendo promise a new Zelda and Mario game for it.

1) Nintendo system is announced -- looks absurd from an aesthetic standpoint -- no first party games are shown and people pan the tech demos which aren't actually games.

2) Mario comes out for it and it sells 10 million.

so they are gonna make one of the best consoles ever, but it is gonna be destroyed by the release of the ps2 a year later?

well I don't really know enough about it yet to make a judgement call. Although so far I'm not really interested.

Except it's not even an HD Wii, cuz apparently it doesn't upscale Wii games. Which would have actually been enough for me to consider purchasing one.

Still gotta wait for some info on first-party Wii U games.

@Lazarus - Don't sell that quarter short. It's right more often than Pachter, hell, a stopped clock is right more often, too.

It would be nice if they would start talking about games for the thing, since they already unveiled it at last E3. But their silence is deafening. It's starting to look like the Wii's blue ocean strategy has left them adrift without a direction.

Well, if the price-point is in the $250-300 range that's been alluded to, Pachter is likely to look like a schmuck (once again).

So its gonna have the best games in the next decade? Cool.

I predict patcher is a orangutan.

I was meant for this business.

Any gamer could give you such a vague prediction resting on so little. I predict the Wii U will sell well but will not get much support from third parties except for ports. How is that worse than Pachter's?

@lazarus1209: because it's clueless old people who don't know the first thing about the industry who pay him to say what he thinks. Then they go off and make massive trades on stick markets based on that. Tossing a coun for the same effect doesn't allow them to blame others if they get it wrong!

Another comparison could be made between the Wii-U and the original Wii, only it doesn't seem as if the Wii-U will have a new Xbox or Playstation for competition when it debuts.

@Chris

Yep, pretty much. My question though, and honestly I've been wondering this since the GameCube, is... how long can that continue? Doesn't any gaming franchise, even something as ubiquitous as Mario or Zelda, have a limited lifespan? I mean, I see how many copies New Super Mario Bros Wii sold. I know we're not anywhere near the end of that lifespan, but then... how many of those copies were sold because people already happened to have a Wii they weren't doing anything else with?

In other words, do those franchises still have the power to sell consoles, and if so, how long can they continue to do so?

And yesterday epic software said its going to be AMAZING...........

And pachter was wrong about the wii, ds, and 3ds so why wouldnt he be wrong now?


Its best not to take him too seriously

As long as it still has good first party games it will do better than dreamcast. I still don't think it will do very good though. I predict a gamecube repeat, as I don't think even the casuals will latch on to this system very well (you can't play wii sports/dance minigames with that tablet, I don't think Nintendo will be able to have ANOTHER successful brain age when they're already done to death on portable systems.)

What Magnalon said. Nintendo doesn't even need step 3 (?????), they skip straight to 4 (Profit!).

You know it's gonna be a lot cheaper to send your kids to Wii U than some other college.

Let me guess, a Yahtzee cup full of chicken bones was how he made his enlightened prediction? Just like PlayStation 3 being the largely dominant console by 2012?


Yeah, you know what? No.... yeah....

It's amazing how short people's memories are. Sure, the Wii and the DS were successful, but the Gamecube, the N64, and the Virtual Boy were problematic, especially when compared with their immediate predecessors: the SNES and the Gameboy. Nintendo -can- make mistakes. Mario doesn't necessarily everything. The Wii was built as much on its gimmicks and the fact that people love bowling as it was on Mario and Co.

IMHO, the Wii U looks significantly weaker than the 3DS. Unless Nintendo finds a great well to 'sell' the central gimmick for the system, it really could end up doing not so well.

Still, the Dreamcast is a bad comparison point. Sega was already coming off of the failure of the Saturn, the Nomad, the 32x, etc., and they completely lost the ability to make good Sonic games after Sonic and Knuckles. The Wii U will do better than the Dreamcast. The Gamecube, however.. I'm not so sure.

"It's been a while since we've had a quote from Michael "Stink Pouch" Pachter to infuriate the masses"

Oh cmon. He's been saying a lot of stupid stuff lately. You have to keep up Jim lol

I wasn't aware that people cared about what Pachter thought anymore. If he's saying it will bomb than the opposite will be true.

... isnt the ps3 the dominant console now? I mean, why would you even bother getting an xbox anymore?

It's still too early to say either way.

I don't quite understand this part:

"Still, there's no denying that the Wii U carries some shades of the Dreamcast with it, what with its late arrival and all."

Wasn't the initial problem with the Dreamcast that it was too early and people were waiting on the PS2?

Either way seeing how the Wii U does will be interesting. My only worry for it so far is when I talked to a non-gamer about it and they were insistent that it wasn't a new console - simply an add-on. That said, decent marketing should solve that.

What shades of the Dreamcast? Dreamcast hit the market well before the other seventh gen systems....

Haha, Pachter's like a six-figure troll these days. The fuckers been calling for the HD Wii for years. He must bring a lot of traffic in for gametrailers, because nobody's making money off of his industry predictions.

@Trist
I'd be really interested in seeing someone study that. But when you think about it, it takes a LONG time for franchises to "die".

Look at Star Wars. It's nearly a decade older than Mario. They simply switched their marketing towards children (our kids will probably think Star Wars "is" the Clone Wars cartoon now) -- they still make bank.

Hell, with merchandise they probably make more than they did with the original trilogy. Now you have me thinking about the "maximum average" lifespan of a mega-franchise - we'd have to go deeper.

@Dixon

I hate to say it but I actually agree with certain aspects of this.

But we all know that the Nintendrones will come out en masse once Mario or Zelda happens on this.

"...what with its late arrival and all."

Don't you mean "early"? The DreamCast released 4 years after the Saturn, and one year before the PS3.

The Wii U, if it does release this year, would follow the traditional 5-6 year console cycle.

Heck, the Xbox 360 has more in common with the DreamCast in terms of release: 4 years after it's predecessor, one year before it's competition.

The only thing these devs are interested in are the graphics. Watch and see devs will kiss Nintendo's ass now

Nintendo has such a powerful weapon - overwhelming nostalgia for NES-era franchises - that they can seemingly fuck up as much as they please. Even if the Wii U bombs at launch, they can just trim the price and put out a new Mario game and all will be forgiven.

Well now that we know how "Spacious Anus" Pachter feels, I think we can all safely invest our life savings in nintendo stock before wii-u launches.

At least Nintendo is making games that utilize their hardware instead of always racing to the latest hardware with no idea how to use it. I would rather have well built games that utilize the available hardware than a beautiful looking, terrible game.

Every time Nintendo does ANYTHING, people immediately start calling it the end of the line for them.

Their franchises, consistent quality and rabid fan base will keep them alive. They're in a much better position than Sony, wether you guys would agree or not.

I think we are also going to see much much longer development time for nintendos first party studios, considering how much of a problem japanese developers seem to be having with the switch to HD. They still don't even have voice acting in their main franchises and that's been pretty much standard since PS2. this gen will bite nintendo in their archaic ass...

I think a lot of people fail to understand - even though the truth is right there - that Nintendo's consoles are supplemental and their handhelds are where the core games happen more often. I don't buy a Wii expecting it to be core. Nintendo was in the handheld market before the NES.

Nintendo abandoned arcades the second it had success for consoles. People got used to the idea of consoles being a mainstay, but with the success of Game Boy Nintendo already had something to carry them from the SNES era. It worked. N64 and Gamecube played second-fiddle to Game Boy and Game Boy adviance. Gamecube and Wii played second fiddle to DS and now 3DS

I see Wii U as an acknoledgement that the console market is nearing its end, much like arcades and that they're preparing a happy medium before the paridigm shift happens. There's really no reason for us to have consoles in five to ten years, not with how technology is evolving and people are demonstrating on iPad and iPhone what Nintendo has proven for many, many years - that smaller experiences made by small studios spending less money can be profitable, sound business.

I have no doubt there will still be a place ot play video games on a big screen, but don't expect the hardware that does it ten years from now to be the same way we do things now. It will become portable, it will collapse into a tablet. Nintendo is on the right track here.

I really don't get it. Why does everyone hate Michael Pachter?

He's saying it's going to be a first to market console with design years ahead of it's time, only to be crushed by a massive overhyped marketing scheme from the competitors? What?

If there's one thing I've learned in my time as a gamer, it's this: never, ever, ever, ever bet against Nintendo.

Unless it's the Virtual Boy. Then it's probably pretty safe to bet against Nintendo.

lol @ Chris Carter, I just watched that episode again last night.

I think the thing that Nintendo needs to do to stay in the game is put some control over the shovelware on the next-gen console. I have a Wii but it never gets played anymore just because I don't have the patience to look over all the garbage games to see if there may be a good one hiding in there when there's a much better selection of games on my PS3.

Its nintendo, it will do well. Sadly i fear it will fail to garner any intrest for just like the wii.

I buy a nintendo consol and... 4 games tops. Happens to me everytime

@killias2
"Sure, the Wii and the DS were successful, but the Gamecube, the N64, and the Virtual Boy were problematic..."

Problematic in what sense?

Perception? Yes. Profit? Aside from the VirtualBoy, which they killed in one year, heck no.

Let's remember that the GameCube gave them their highest profit margin from a console before the Wii. The N64 lost them a lot of market share, but made them a lot of cash. Success is not only measured by market share.

And granted, not everything they produce is successful, but their track record with their primary platforms is enviable.

And we ARE talking about "failure" here, that's what Patcher is implying: the Wii U will kill Nintendo's console business; it will be their "DreamCast". That's ridiculous, 1st because Nintendo is not even close to the position Sega was when they left the console business and secondly, and this is a real kicker:

The DreamCast was NOT a failure. Sega left the console race, because SegaNet killed them, not the Dreamcast.

To be clear, someone asked him if Nintendo was about to "Dreamcast" themselves, the viewer came up with the terminology, not him. Also, there's no way I used all those commas correctly.

I'm amazed at how little imagination everyone has when it comes to the Wii U. It's a pretty ingenious setup. If Nintendo can put together a few games highlighting what can be done with it then they're sure to do well.

I agree with him completely. Based on what we know now (slightly more power than the 360, expensive single controller, etc), I can't imagine any other scenario than it bombing. I mean, they're releasing games that everyone already owns (Arkham City), and WILL already own (Darksiders 2) as flagship titles.

And Nintendo doesn't like to play the same game that the rest of the industry does by pricing systems at a loss and making up for it with software. I just can't see that controller being cheap or NEARLY as innovative as they claim it to be.

Unless we're running on incorrect information here (which, hilariously enough is the same information Nintendo gave us last year and then shut up REAL fast), then I just don't see a market for this system.

I think they'd be better off making a Wii2 with built in motion plus in EVERY controller (or even slightly better motion tech), and just trying to get the same throngs of people who own Wiis to upgrade.

It worked for the 3DS (at least it did as soon as they priced it reasonably).