 Alright, I want to start off by saying I don't believe that we should toss any insults the way of this analyst. It is very popular for Nintendo fans to hate on him for many of the weird, potentially asinine statements he has made over the years about Nintendo. We need to remember what exactly his job is. This analyst's job is to help investors make stock investments and the actual analytical evidence and suggestions that he provides to investors is never known publicly because it is a paid for report that he customizes per investor. So yes, he deals with the video game industry. Yes, he deals with stock investments, but his personal opinion on video games doesn't matter as much as people think it does. And so we shouldn't go attacking him and saying he's bad at his job because we're talking about Michael Pachter. You guys know who Michael Pachter is. I'm sure at this point if you've never heard of Michael Pachter, he has been an industry analyst for a long time. He follows a ton of different stocks including Nintendo and the video game industry and makes different investor suggestions and he's clearly good at his job because he's been working at WebBush securities for a hell of a long time and you don't keep a job as an industry analyst that handles stock investments if you're not making investors money. So he obviously is good at what he does, but it doesn't mean that he necessarily understands Nintendo. In fact, he's always been acutely misunderstanding of Nintendo, although I do think he had one point in his career or he was correct or Nintendo should have did a Wii HD. They should have released it in 2010. That is something Michael Pachter was calling for for three straight years. I think Nintendo should have done that instead of doing the Wii U in 2012. And this is despite the fact that I really, really enjoy the Wii U. I think they would have found much more success with a Wii HD that had the Wii U like power, but took all Wii games, put them in HD. If they would have did that in 2010, they would have I think so massive boon and sales and were able to hold out an extra year or two and maybe get the Nintendo switch out the door. Alright, that's neither here nor there. That's water under the bridge. What is he saying now? Well, he did an interview with Gaming Bolt. And he said that I don't really understand the whole hybrid concept talking about the switch. I don't think most people play it in both modes. I would say that maybe 20% of switch owners play both modes. And I think most switch owners play it handheld only. So I honestly don't understand the whole point of the hybrid. Who cares? Play it as a handheld. Now, okay, personal opinion, right? He doesn't really get why people would even play this thing on their TV. They play it in handheld. Alright, whatever. Right? No problem, honestly, with those statements. That's just a personal preference of, Hey, look, I don't think people do this. So whatever. Alright, but here's where here's where he's getting some flak. And Nintendo isn't that smart. So you never know what they will do next. But I think the smart thing would be to get rid of the switch console and only have the switch light. Get rid of the docking station, get rid of playing on the TV. Heck, maybe offer a fire stick style dongle for those that want to play it on the TV. So he thinks that the system that is now been the number one seller for 22 straight months with the dockable switch being the lead sales one in the United States. So it is the top dog more people buy that than the light. Basically dominating in sales for three straight years in Japan, where it is the top selling system is the normal switch not the light save for like two weeks when stock shortages happened and then the light sales blew up and then the light ran out of stock units, right? He's saying that the number one selling platform in the world, the number one version of that platform should go away and Nintendo should just sell the light. From a business perspective, this is stupid. One, because the OG switches $100 more chances are Nintendo makes a higher profit margin on that switch than they do on the switch light. But here is another reason why it's asinine. He has no idea how many people are playing in TV only. He suggests that you know what 20% of people play in both modes. Okay, so let's say 20% of 60 million people play in both modes, right? 20% of all sales, let's say everyone plays in both modes. Well, if you take 61 million and you multiply that by 20%, you end up with 12 million 200,000 players that just based on Michael Packer's estimate play the game in both modes. Now, I have a question from Michael Packer. And this is this is just a legitimate question about understanding the switch. If a majority of people play in handheld only, right, if they buy the switch and all they do is play in handheld only, and there's no power difference behind you, there is no benefit to playing handheld only on a normal switch versus a light, there's no benefit. You might as well just buy a light, it's cheaper, right? Might as well get a light. More color options, all that jazz. Get a light. What's the benefit? Well, the benefit is if they want to put it on their TV, they can. And you're only addressing people that play in, you know, say, docked and handheld. What about people that play docked only? Believe it or not, there is an audience of switch that plays dock only. Let's say that audience is only 10% of switch owners, right? So now we get up to, you know, what is it 30% based on his own little estimate, not based on any real data. But let's let's say that we get that 30% figure now. So now let's take that 61 million. And let's times that by 30%. Oh, now we have 18,300,000 people that take advantage of dock mode. This is just low ball estimates, I guarantee you more than 20% of the switch's audience, at least 20% that by the more expensive switch, play in that mode, I think it's probably more like a 6040 split among people that buy that version of switch, where 60% play it in handheld primarily 40% play it and docked primarily. And then there's some crossover in between of, you know, people that play it in both, which I'm one of those people that I play it in both, I play it in handheld, and I play it in dodge mode. Like this to me is just such an asinine statement. You know, he thinks the next move for Nintendo should be to stop selling that platform and just sell the light. Why? Why would you discontinue your number one selling plot? Like, does he understand that the switch as it is the dockable version is the best selling version? Like even to this date? Does he magically think if they discontinue it, sales of switch light are going to explode to a level to replace it? And I can see some logic there because it's a cheaper system. But really, really get rid of the most desired platform, get rid of the platform that Nintendo that people are demanding Nintendo releases a pro model version of that's more powerful, but also can dock. I just think he's missing the boat here. And he's ignoring that Nintendo's own marketing. Remember, this is Nintendo's marketing, what Nintendo refers to it as, they call the switch a home console. They don't compare the sales to 3ds. They don't compare the sales to DS or Game Boy Advance or Game Boy. No, no, no, no, no, no, they compare switch sales to the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the N64, the GameCube, the Wii and the Wii U. They list the switch as a home console. Now, you could argue, well, if you still play it in handheld but you're playing at home, isn't that a home console? But we all know the idea of being a home console means you're dockable or playable, at least on a TV. So yeah, okay, a fire TV stick solution. That is so much more cumbersome than a dock you just drop it in. Right now, the Nintendo Switch dock, maybe you think it's too bulky. And there are, you know, third party options or little cases and shells you can transfer the dock into, to get a smaller sleeker form factor for dropping play. But a little dongle, like we use with our phones sometimes when we want to dock them with a TV, a little dongle. The reason the Switch dock works as well as it is, as appealing as it is, is because you just drop the switch in and pick it up and go, you don't really have to plug in anything per se, even though it technically is plugging something in every time, we don't see that action, we just drop it in and it works. We pick it up and we go. That's a convenience factor. It's convenient. It's smooth. It just works. Why complicate that process with dongles? Why? Ask the laptop community that is slowly seeing the upper echelon, the top-tier laptops, the thinning lights, and the more expensive laptops are slowly getting rid of USB ports, USB A ports, right? They're going with all these Thunderbolt and USB C ports, which is fine outside of the fact that still a vast majority of PC accessories use USB A still. And because of that, you need dongles out the ass. They'll be like, oh, we gave you two USB C ports, maybe they're even Thunderbolt and USB C. Have a good day. But then you need dongles out the ass to get Ethernet. You need dongles out the ass to plug in a freaking mouse and an external keyboard, external monitors, like dongle, dongle, dongle, dongle. And people don't actually like having to have to use dongles. They don't. People are not like people don't like using dongles. We use them because we don't have a choice. We don't actually want to use freaking dongles. They're cumbersome. They're easy to lose, right? Like no one wants to use dongles if we can avoid them. The reason that people are trying to be accepting of dongles is because if you're buying an ultra thin and light computer, you obviously know that USB A ports are thicker than USB C. So it makes sense to maybe give up some of that convenience to get a thinner, lighter laptop. If that's something that really matters to you that you need a thinner, lighter laptop or want a thinner, lighter laptop, okay, then you're going to give up stuff like that. But there's nothing, you don't gain anything by getting rid of the OG switch model. What do you gain? What do you gain? You have a more expensive system that's making more money per unit sold. What does Nintendo gain by getting rid of that and just pushing the switch light? What's the advantage? You lose instant to player, you can't do games like Ring Fit Adventure, because now joy cons are accessories rather than included controllers. So there's that you lose, you know, a lot of the motion control stuff that just dances to the world won't work as well. Like what, what is he thinking? What I sometimes I wonder what goes on in Michael Pachter's brain. Now again, not insulting the guy. He's clearly very good at his actual day job. And I'm not going to say all his gaming opinions are invalid. He's had good solid opinions on the video game industry in the past. But for some reason, he has this blind spot for Nintendo most of the time. Now, granted, as I said, I agreed with him on WeHD. Should have been a thing in 2010. But most of the time, I don't think, you know, he always talks about how unpredictable Nintendo is. I kind of think Nintendo, while we don't, you know, quote unquote know what they're going to do next. Honestly, as someone who's been covering them really closely for 20 plus years, whether it was at Zelda Informer or Zelda Universe, Zelda Dungeon, Zelda Domain, or New Nintendo, Nintendo Prime, Nintendo Everything, all the various places I've worked. As someone who's been covering Nintendo for 20 years as both journalist and now, you know, as a YouTuber, like, let me tell you something, Nintendo isn't as unpredictable as people think they are. They're only unpredictable if you don't cover them on a daily basis. It's fairly easy to predict what Nintendo is going to do next. Fairly easy. Every now and then they'll throw you a curveball. They'll throw you a Wii. They'll throw you a DS. Well, if you paid attention, the Wii U with the tablet, a phablet, you know, controller, wasn't actually that unpredictable if you paid attention to the way that Nintendo was patenting things. If you paid enough attention, you could kind of see that Nintendo was going towards a controller with a screen in it. Okay, if you paid attention to that, it's not all that unpredictable that Nintendo would next go from that to a hybrid. Especially if you paid attention to the fact that not only was Wii U sales super low, 3DS sales, which sound nice at 75 million, is the lowest selling Nintendo handheld of all time clearly Nintendo needed to find a way to meld the two together. It was pretty predictable that we were going to get the switch. Now maybe unpredictable that they were going to go with Nvidia as a partner for it, but still predictable that they were going to make a platform like switch. So if you don't pay close enough attention to Nintendo, it seems like they're random and just do whatever. But they have a rhyme and a reason to the things that they do. Do their ideas always work out? No, obviously. But they're not as unpredictable as people think. They're really not. They just don't do things the same way the rest of the industry does. And that's okay. So Michael Pachter, this is a bad take and ever ever arguing that Nintendo and I want to be clear here, ever using the words Nintendo isn't smart in a sentence when Nintendo is the richest company in Japan. I don't know if people remember that. Nintendo has more money in the bank than any other company in all of Japan, all the car companies, Sony, Nintendo has more money than all of them. Nintendo is the richest company in Japan. Nintendo is a company that basically just makes video game stuff. Yeah, they have Universal Park stuff opening as well. They're creating other revenue streams. There's a Mario movie coming. But we all know Nintendo's makes like 90 plus percent of their money off the video game market. They do basically one thing and one thing only make systems and make video games. And they're so good at it. They're so good at it that they're the richest company in Japan, that they're never in debt, that they never have to lay off thousands upon thousands of employees to fix their bottom line, that when they have failures, they have so much money that they can afford to eat the losses on those failures and do better next time around. Nintendo is a very intelligent company, maybe one of the smartest companies in the video game industry. It doesn't mean that they do everything right. Yeah, they're dumb when it comes to online. I don't know why in 2020 Nintendo is still so oblivious on what a good online networking system looks like not just for online gameplay, but for voice chat and for consumers. I don't know why they're still so far behind the times on that. I can't explain it. They've had plenty of time to figure it out. Maybe they never figured it out. But as a company, as a business, Nintendo is very intelligent to argue otherwise, to call them not smart. Hopefully it's just a bad slip of the tongue. Because clearly Nintendo knows what the hell they're doing. To the tune of 22 straight months as the number one selling platform in the United States, with the Switch model you want them to get rid of, leading the way. Anyways, I am Nathan Robledance from Nintendo Prime. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.