Advertisement

Register for free to remove this ad

Baring unforseen problems, this week's CAGcast guest will be Michael Pachter, Video Game Analyst for Wedbush Morgan. He is probably the most quoted gaming analyst on the internets.

The focus of the interview will be on "Life as a Video Game Analyst", but if we have time, we will quiz him on some of the bigger news topics.

Any questions you want answered?

How did you get into the video game industry, and how did you become a video game analyst?

Do video game analysts know they are laughed at by the video game community?

Is it hard to make vague guesses at what the PS3/360/Wii are going to do so if you are wrong you can save face?

What is your opinion on the current state of video games and what things would you change?

I think that the $59.99 price is too high for games. It seems that video games developers not only have the initial sale of the game itself but have found lots of new streams of revenue such as in game advertising, extra down loaded content, extra money for collector editions, and some companies like EA are even selling the sound tracks to their games on iTunes. But they still feel they need to charge us the consumers even more money for the games.

Would companies be better off pricing their games at a cheaper price point, and hoping to sell more copies of the game so that there were more customers for in game advertising, and more customers to purchase down loaded content?

boxers or briefs?


and where do you get the meat of your info on the industry? (numbers, etc)

Ask what gave him the idea that 64 bit games took twice as long to develop for than 32 bit games. (I'm pretty sure he said that)

Also mention this:

"I don't think there are four million people in the world who really want to play online games every month," said Michael Pachter, a research analyst for Wedbush Morgan, a securities firm. "World of Warcraft is such an exception. I frankly think it's the buzz factor, and eventually it will come back to the mean, maybe a million subscribers." "It may continue to grow in China," Mr. Pachter added, "but not in Europe or the U.S. We don't need the imaginary outlet to feel a sense of accomplishment here. It just doesn't work in the U.S. It just doesn't make any sense."

Then follow it all up with Mr Unoriginal's question.

Last call for questions!

what games are you playing right now? and what games are you looking forward to?

What sort of background do you need to be an analyst?

Screw the softball questions, ask him some hard ones like why he said this:

"I don't think there are four million people in the world who really want to play online games every month."
- http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2...r-post_12.html

"At the end of the day, we don’t play games for social interaction … We play games to escape.” Microsoft’s strategy is “absolutely flawed,” he said."
- http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2...t-of-2006.html

"Warcraft is so good and so good-looking that it got this immediate attraction; everybody who would ever consider playing an online game said, 'This is the one. I gotta try it.' And what'll happen is inevitably, like the health club model, after you pay your 30 bucks a month for 3 or 4 months and you only go once a week, you realize it's not worth it and you split. That's what will happen with Warcraft ... I think it's going to roll back to a million. I'm not predicting it's going to happen in three weeks; I'd guess it has a half-life of 6 months to a year,"
- http://thinkexist.com/quotation/warc...it/461948.html

It's nice to have interviews, but this guy is a tool.

Is this the guy Wombat makes fun of so much? I can't wait for this...

How often have your predictions come true? Give examples please.