Michael Pachter: Who Cares What Sony Will Announce At E3?

I recently had the chance to sit down with Michael Pachter, the well known analyst with Wedbush Securities, who is known for his outspoken opinions. We ended up talking about a lot of things, and during the course of the interview, I decided to ask him about E3 in general, and what he thinks Sony may announce at the event this Summer. Especially after how great Sony’s E3 went last year, does Pachter expect them to have a memorable showing this year as well?

According to Pachter, the question is meaningless- Sony may have the best showing at E3, but in the long run, that doesn’t matter, because what they show and what they release are two very different things.

“The Last Guardian for the fifteenth time? Is that coming out? Do we have a date yet?” Pachter laughed, before elaborating on why he isn’t too enthusiastic about Sony’s showing.

“I gotta say, if you ever want to look at the ten biggest disappointments from E3 of all time, they would all be from Sony’s press conferences,” he said. “And by disappointment, I don’t necessarily mean something bad happening at Sony’s conference- i mean something was announced which never showed up. I remember the PlayStation 3 press conference, before the PS3 ever came out, and they actually showed one of the characters from Red Dead Redemption… it was clearly a western from Rockstar, and Read Dead Redemption came out in 2010.

“So… who cares what Sony will show at E3 this year? It probably means it won’t come out some time in the near future anyway. So, they could probably showcase The Last of Us 2, and say that’s coming ‘sometime,’” he concluded. He speculated that Sony will probably have a big blowout for PlayStation VR at E3 this year, which sounds likely- but in the end, he didn’t seem to be too fussed about the games Sony may or may not show off this year.