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Analyst Michael Pachter has continued his long-running criticism of Nintendo with another scathing attack against the platform holder.
I think that they are still in denial about the Wii U failure,” he told Game Informer. You keep seeing this stat so we’re up 82 per cent – yeah, 40,000 units went to 70,000 units. Who cares? You’re still trailing the other guys by a mile.
They need a new console that’s competitive with Xbox One and PlayStation 4. If Xbox can sell at $349 Nintendo could make it and sell for $249. They won’t because they still live in that old console world where they think they need to make a profit on the hardware. That means if they make a competitive console it would be more expensive.”
Pachter also believes that Nintendo may have already burnt its third party bridges, speculating that big publishers are unlikely to support any future hardware thanks to the many third party failures that have plagued recent Nintendo machines.
The problem is I think they did a bad job with third parties with the Wii and they’ve done an abysmal job with third parties with the Wii U, so I don’t think third parties would come back for a new console,” he added.
If they come out with a new console and it is essentially identical programming language with the Xbox so the cost to port a game is zero, I’m still sceptical that third parties would support it. They possibly would, but only if the cost was so low.”
Pachter has been a willing and frequent critic of Nintendo for many years now.
In 2010 he slated the company for remaining static while Sony and Microsoft made a move on the Wii market. In 2012 he claimed it was in disarray having left it too late to launch Wii U, and later that year questioned the entire Wii U strategy. A year later he said the company was in a world of trouble” in the face of upcoming competition from PS4 and Xbox One.
He has also directly criticised Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata, saying in 2013 that he didn’t know why Iwata is still employed”. That’s a theme the analyst returned to with Game Informer, too.
Like I said, they lack introspection. I think that starts with leadership,” he argued. Iwata makes a lot of bad decisions. I think he surrounds himself with people who allow him to make these bad decisions. It starts at the top. I think he is not a good leader.”
