Pachter: Nintendo ‘Got it Wrong’ With Wii U, Needs Price Cut

Following the release of Nintendo’s Third Quarter Earnings, Wedbush Securities analyst Michal Pachter offered several blunt statements on the Wii U’s prospects. Nintendo reported shipping 3.06 million units of their newest console, and 11.69 million Wii U games, during their third quarter, leading them to revise their year-end predictions. According to NOWGamer, Pachter has no problem with these projections

“I always thought Nintendo’s Wii U software forecast made no sense,” Pachter said. “They initially guided 24 million, are taking that down to 16 million, which is a 4:1 software attach rate. That’s reasonable, especially given that the installed base is 3 million hardware units now and the guidance implies they need to ship only 4.31 million more software units.”

With regards to the systems waning sales, which as of January 19th had dropped to 40,000 units, however, he had strong words for Nintendo.

“The hardware guidance is disappointing, and there isn’t really anything that will get hardware moving other than a price cut. I think they got it wrong with this console, it just doesn’t capture the imagination the way that the Wii did.”

Later, at a press briefing, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata stated that a Wii U price cut is not being planned, given that the system is already sold at a loss. How the system will fare without it remains to be seen, but Iwata mentioned that plans to increase sales include improving consumer awareness and pushing development of new games for the system.

Pachter concludes with dire predictions about the the Wii U after a year on the market.

“The Wii U is not going to be very competitive if Sony and Microsoft launch comparable consoles at comparable prices,” explained Pachter. “The early weakness will cause many third party publishers to re-think support for the Wii U, and we might not see much support at holiday 2013.”