I'll Tell You What's Wrong With Wall Street

   In a Marketwatch article published today titled Videogame sales compete with online time | Popular titles such as ‘Call of Duty,’ ‘Halo’ may keep gamers at home, a Wedbush Morgan game analyst named Michael Pachter says the following:

"Pachter of Wedbush says game publishers will need to figure out how to start making money from the online playing of their game titles to preserve their value. “Nothing is free forever,” Pachter commented. “You can buy a game now and play it for 500 hours when you used to play it for 50 hours and be done with it. More people are playing console games for more hours and not paying for it.”

   First of all Michael, the best games don't have a shelf life. Your way of thinking is typical of a greedy Wall Street analyst who only thinks in terms of revenue, profit margins, and constant profiteering. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with a gamer who buys a copy of a game for $60 + tax and plays it for 500-1000 hours without incurring any additional fees. If Activision or EA wants additional income from a game, they've already figured out how to do it by way of downloadable content, expansion packs, and in-game purchases.

   Game developers should continue to produce top notch software that can be played beyond the typical Wall Street view of 50-100 hours and "be done with it." If Michael Pachter and his ilk had their way, they'd encourage developers to produce games that can only be played for 50 hours before a fee system kicks in that charges the gamer for every additional hour beyond 50. That folks, is how a game analyst on Wall Street thinks.