The Fryer, Vol. 3

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10/2/2008 7:14 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 4

Analysts agree: Console wars won't matter in the long run

As the videogame industry looks ahead to the always-contentious holiday season, industry analysts are unanimous in their determination that the current console wars will be rendered immaterial by the relentless march of time.

"The entire videogame industry is but a microscopic speck of dirt floating along the vast, endless winds of eternity," said Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter in his quarterly guidance report. "Microsoft's price drop might seem like a smart move in the short run, but the extremely long-term view shows it to be just another meaningless blip against the endless, soul-crushing progression of entropy and chaos."

Lazard Capital Markets' Colin Sebastian was similarly sanguine in his latest note to industry investors, urging them to "evaluate [their] essentially meaningless role in the cosmic dance" before making any investment decisions. "The annals of history will take little note of the movement of Nintendo's quarterly income dividends," he wrote, "and even if it did, those history books and everyone who ever touched them will one day crumble into dust, to be strewn across the vast, interstellar void of space like so much effluvium from a brief universal sneeze."

Investors are already expressing bafflement at the wave of ennui and introspection infecting industry watchers. "Look, any first-year business school dropout can talk about the essential meaninglessness of existence," said tech fund manager Jim Brownlee. "I look to these analysts for truly deep insights into the philosophical underpinnings of the gaming sector, and instead I get pablum about the 'eternal oneness of all beings'? Come on!"

It's not all gloom and doom in analyst land, though. IDC Gaming Analyst Billy Pidgeon put a decidedly rosier outlook on the inescapable oblivion that will eventually greet everyone and everything involved in the game industry. "Sony's declining share of the market may be as immaterial as our deeply troubled existences, but it has no effect on your ability to enjoy the warmth of the sun on a summer day or the sound of a child's laugh as it bounces off the surface of a lake," he said. "I recommend investing in a full, meaningful life, while you still have the chance."

While all three analysts agreed on the utter futility of trying to predict the random and largely incomprehensible machinations of the universe, Sebastian was willing to offer a "concrete window" of 6 to 8 billion years for the destruction of the Earth in the corona of a quickly expanding sun. All three analysts will be available to take questions on their outlook at the bar of McGinty's Pub during Happy Hour tonight.