Pachter Weighs In On Xbox’ Announcement and Predicts Some Console Releases
If you follow the video game industry closely, you know who Michael Pachter is. He is video game, social media, digital media and electronics analyst with Wedbush Securities. He is also the Head of Research for the Private Shares Group, a Wedbush division which focuses on companies which have not yet gone public such as Facebook (pre-IPO) and Twitter. Pachter is outspoken and people love to eat up whatever he has to say.
Recently, Pachter was featured in an episode of the GamerTag Radio podcast. During the episode he talked E3 and Microsoft’s decision to announce Project Scorpio a year and a half before the actual release.
Pachter reported the following:
“The hardware reveals were great. The Xbox One S really does look great and obviously the big reveal of Scorpio at the end was a big deal. I think Microsoft confirming the leaks was a big move, a bold move. I think the Xbox One S will be welcome at that right price, $299. The conspiracy theorist in me says, since Andrew House acknowledged the PlayStation 4 Neo to the Financial Times a few days before, Microsoft just said: “Screw it, we’re not going to let Sony be ahead of us, we’re just going to let people know we have something big coming too.”
You don’t have a company in the gaming space that’s better equipped to launch hardware than Sony. They’ve been making consumer electronics for 70 years. I think the fact that we didn’t see Neo here means that it probably isn’t coming out this Holiday. If it was, that meant it was already in fabrication and we’d actually know about it; I think they’re just going to launch PlayStation VR in October and then the Neo sometime in April-June, probably ahead of the Holiday. It’s easier to launch a product in mid year because you don’t have gift givers buying it, so you don’t have quite as big of a demand and you can actually satisfy demand from the fanboys.
For Nintendo, again, it’s back to manufacturing. I think if they were ready to launch the NX in March, they could have shown it here. I don’t think they’re going to be ready. If we don’t get an announcement on NX and we don’t see specs by August or September, I don’t think there’s a chance it comes out by March.
I think that’s a Summer launch. So I actually think we might see PS4 Neo and the Nintendo NX right about the same time, mid-year 2017.”
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