Analyst predicts glorious revolution

REGULAR READERS of the INQ will know that we're not particularly enamoured with the vast majority of technology 'analysts' that purport to cover the cutting edge of the market. It's often hard to escape the feeling that these oiks are little more than journalists-come-bankers that didn't quite make the grade.

So it's always nice to have one's opinions vindicated, as happens when one reads a piece like this one at Gamasutra. In it, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter predicts, stunningly, that price cuts are likely across the range of games consoles next year.

Really? Cutting edge technology will come down in price in the next 18 months as competition intensifies? We would never have contemplated such a thing.

There are so many gems in Pachter's report that it's hard to know where to start. "We expect next generation console software sales growth to highly correlate to any increase in the rate of PS2 software sales decline." In other words, as people upgrade from PS2 to next-gen boxes, next-gen console software sales will grow as PS2 sales decline. A stunning observation, for sure.

New, cheaper models of Sony hardware - the slim PSP and the 40B PSP - will trigger a "modest increase" in hardware sales, as Pachter goes out on a limb to predict that making something better and cheaper will increase its appeal.

As a parting shot, our man Mike recommends Activision, EA, THQ and Ubisoft - the biggest players in the games software industry - as strong performers in the near future. That wouldn't be anything to do with the massive list of Christmas games coming out in the next two months dominated by, you guessed it, Activition, EA, THQ and Ubisoft?

A quick Google reveals that Pachter is famed for his startlingly obvious or flat-out stupid predictions.

Here, he is quote as saying "I don’t think there are four million people in the world who really want to play online games every month." Eight million World of Warcraft subscribers later, he may want to re-think that one. Just last month, he cunningly predicted that EA's deal to buy Bioware for hundreds of millions of dollars would "place more pressure on them to deliver revenues".

Honestly, how does this man still have a job? We could sit a 10 year old in a room with a pile of press releases and come up with more insightful copy. [Yes, now get back in your room Wiley, you can have some milk later - News Ed.] µ