We’ve always considered videogame industry analyst Michael Pachter as little more than a well informed professional guesser – and it seems that more often than not lately, his guesses have been way off the mark. He recently made some comments about the Wii U’s very traditional Pro controller (that bears more than a striking resemblance to the 360 controller), saying that it was likely due to Activision pushing for it on the grounds of Call of Duty support – which they’d pull without its inclusion.
He’s now backtracked on that a little, saying it was but "an educated guess".
“I am putting two and two together to conclude that Activision put pressure on them," Pachter said to GamesBeat. "I do not know this either first-hand or third-hand; nobody told me. I am merely deducing it from what we know, and it’s an educated guess."
So pretty much like everything else he says.
"If the Pro Controller is for multiplatform games, that means it is for third-party games," he surmised. "Nintendo has never done anything altruistically for third parties, so I concluded that they added the Pro Controller because of pressure from third parties. The pressure could have come from anywhere – EA with sports games, Ubisoft with Assassin’s Creed, or Take-Two with GTA – but it seems to me that the ‘prize’ that would make the Wii U legitimate as a console of choice for multiplatform games is Call of Duty."
As pointed out, that makes little sense. The Wii’s already home to Call of Duty – which has done reasonably well on the platform. I think Nintendo opted for the controller as a n update to the Wii’s classic controller, and bit of goodwill towards the core gamers – who they’re trying to gear the Wii U towards.
Last Updated: July 19, 2012
