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Pachter - No one will support Wii U, Nintendo to become irrelevant, Call of Duty a failure

by rawmeatcowboy
06 December 2012
GN Version 4.0
The following comments come from Michael Pachter...

On future Wii U support...

“I think you're going to see now with the Wii U, notwithstanding its early launch support, nobody's going to support it. I don't think we're going to see every game on the Wii U next year. I think when next-gen consoles come out they're going to be better than the Wii U. Call of Duty is amazing on the Wii U this year. The problem with playing Call of Duty online is it's a community and if there's only four people playing it on the Wii U it's no fun. Nobody in their right mind would buy a Wii U and say 'I'm going to play Call of Duty.' That's like saying 'I gave up Facebook, and it's Google+ now'.”

On Call of Duty...

“Call of Duty, I'm calling it a failure. I know the game sells billions of dollars. Activision did a bad thing with Call of Duty from a profit perspective. They trained gamers that you can buy a game and play it all year, ten hours a week, forever, and you never have to pay again. You just wait for the next Call of Duty. I promise you there are plenty of people, numbering in the millions, who play one game, which is Call of Duty, and they never stop. That's just like the people who play World of Warcraft and never stop, yet the World of Warcraft guys are paying $180 a year, and the Call of Duty guys are paying $60. So who's got a better model? This multiplayer thing being free was a mistake. I don't think anybody ever envisioned it would be this big. It's a mistake because it keeps those people from buying and playing other games.”

On Nintendo stock and Nintendo becoming irrelevant...

“Nintendo's trading at about $3 billion of equity value; it was trading at about $80 billion. The market hates business models that start to show losses, and start to fail. Crappy little Riot Games, doing $150 million in revenue and wildly profitable, is worth a buttload more than Zynga, doing $1.1 billion and not making money. I think Nintendo becomes completely irrelevant. They have their niche, Nintendo's first-party content is great content, and hardcore people will keep buying their consoles, but they're not going to only play with Nintendo consoles.”

Full interview here