You know what? Everyone can come up with gaming analyses (that’s the plural of analysis so mind you, there is no typo). No seriously, everyone can do his/her homework and predict something. And quite frankly, we got tired of all those gaming analysts that try so hard to predict things that will a) never happen or b) that are 100% confirmed. Ironically, these guys are being paid and the industry seems to be focused on their predictions. However, Diablo III proved analysts wrong and shows why we don’t need analysts.

Back in May, GamesIndustry posted a prediction from analyst Arvind Bhatia. According to Bhatia, Diablo III would sell ’3.5 million units this year alone and should sell around 4 million copies or more for the lifetime of the title’. Bhatia based his analysis on Diablo II’s lifetime cycle, and that’s precisely what was wrong with his prediction. You see, you can’t predict something based on what happened to its prequel, unless you have inside info.

Fast forward a couple of days and Diablo III has managed to sell over 6.3 million units in a week. Yeap, that’s almost double the number of Bhatia’s annual prediction. See, now Bhatia was obviously predicting something for the sake of it. There was that myth that PC gaming is dead and could not compete with console sales, so Bhatia predicted (based on Diablo II’s sales) that Diablo III would sell 3.5 million units this year. How could a PC exclusive title compete with a multiplatform or a console title, right? Guess again. Basically, we can all be called analysts and predict things like “GTA V will sell 5 million copies in a month”. Hell, there is already an analyst with a similar take on Rockstar’s upcoming game.

Even analyst Pachter was bashing PC gaming in 2010. Ironically, Pachter was thinking that the PC platform was not a good investment for some companies but as we can see, more and more companies jump on the PC bandwagon now. In fact, Pachter said in Pack-Attack that ‘only MMO games are holding up PC gaming‘ and that ‘a lot more flexibility and design in your game if you design for consoles‘.

How wrong Pachter actually was. With the Kickstarter campaigns, we’re getting a lot of innovative SP games on the PC. Games that publishers would not give the green light (for obvious reasons). Games from gamers to gamers. Yeah, we’re getting games for niche markets, but who cares? That’s the whole point of gaming. Just take a look at the amazing DayZ mod. Obviously, we wouldn’t experience something like that if it wasn’t for Bohemia and ArmA 2. This kind of games won’t appear on consoles (well, some of them will but that’s a minority). Not only that, but the console hardware has limited the designers’ visions. Take a look at how Crysis 2 turned out, or how physics, environment openess, AI are limited due to the console hardware. You don’t have to be a genius to see that Pachter had no idea of what he was talking about (he even said that monitors aren’t that great).

Pachter said that MMO games are the only thing keeping PC gaming alive but last time we checked, the greatest e-Sport game is a PC exclusive strategy title and the fastest selling PC title is an action RPG (and not an MMO game). Not only that, but there is a crazy number of indie games, some of which are absolutely amazing. Don’t believe us? Then take a look at Overgrowth. Racing sim games can be enjoyed only on the PC, strategy games are meant for PC configurations, as well as FPS titles. Oh, and let’s not forget that adventures games are coming mostly on the PC.

There are countless examples of other analysts, whose predictions were inaccurate (remember those lovely predictions for X720 and PS4 hitting 2012? Man, what happened to those analysts and why didn’t anyone bother to say that they were wrong?). And that’s precisely why we don’t need this kind of stuff in the gaming industry. Sure, we can as well predict that PC gaming will surpass console gaming in 2013 and that next-generation consoles will feel outdated from the get go. Those predictions are just for the sake of it and an attempt to create a buzz. Funny thing is some of them might come true. Guess we must be gaming analysts then.

Therefore, the only conclusion of this whole article is that all those ‘analyst predictions’ are most of the times rumors that are not credible, at all (especially the bold ones). Yeah, even those ‘big’ analysts have lots of inaccurate predictions that were buried over the years. In fact, go ahead and google ‘Analysts predicts X360 2012′ and you will laugh hard with some of those predictions. One of our best is ‘Analyst Predicts Next Xbox in 2010′. Yeah right, you were spot on there mate.

In other words, enjoy gaming and leave those rumored analyses out of the table. If you want to stick to a platform, stick with it because you love its software and not because an analyst claimed that the platform would die in the next few years or so. It’s funny to read some of them after a couple of years to see what happened but most of the times those analysts are dead wrong. Unless of course they have inside information which means that they are simply leaking information – and not predicting something.

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