Pachter: "I don’t think Nintendo is a good investment"

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has explained in a new interview why he feels Nintendo will never return to its glory days and why the Japanese giant is no longer a good investment.

Off the bat, Nintendo Life asked Pachter to clarify if he hated Nintendo, to which he replied, "No, I don’t hate Nintendo at all. I think that they have missed several opportunities on the hardware side, waited too long to provide multiplayer options and generally have alienated third party publishers across the board. Each of those missteps is likely to cost them in the next console generation."

He then shed light on why he feels Nintendo isn't a sound investment, "I don’t think Nintendo is a good investment, as I don’t see the company returning to its past success with its current products in a more competitive environment."

Elsewhere Pachter discussed the flagging performance of Wii U, where he likened its lifetime sales closer to the GameCube than the original Wii, "I don’t think that the Wii U can succeed without a lot of third party software support, and don’t see third parties supporting it until it grows its installed base.

"Those things are correlated: a small installed base means less third party support, and the installed base can’t grow without third party support. If Nintendo can somehow convince third parties to develop exclusives and to develop cross platform games for Wii U, it has a chance. However, with games like Battlefield and GTA coming out without Wii U versions, it doesn’t appear that the third party support will be forthcoming any time this year.

"The Wii U is closer to the GameCube (23 million) than to the Wii (99 million). At its current price point, I think it will sell as well as the GameCube. If Nintendo cuts price to $199, it will probably sell better than the GameCube.

"If they cut price to a point below $199, it should sell much better than the GameCube. All of this is dependent upon Microsoft and Sony pricing their new consoles above the Wii U price; if they price below, I think the Wii U is in trouble of underperforming even the GameCube."

Ouch. What do you think? Does a severe lack of third-party support mean that Wii U could indeed under-perform against even the GameCube? What could be done to reverse the trend? Let us know below.