Jim Cramer of video games strikes again!

Yesterday, Yahoo Finance brought in two industry analysts, Andrew Merrick of Raymond James and Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities to discuss the EA deal.

That’s when Michael Pachter argued that the industry is moving towards connected TV, cloud streaming, and AI-powered distribution, whereas Sony is still heavily hardware-dependent.

Things got interesting when he got asked a question: “Is there also a case to be made that you buy the bigger conglomerates? Do you buy a Microsoft for Activision? Do you buy a Sony?” He said:

Sony? Sony for sure not. Sony’s a terrible company and they actually are blowing it in the games business, Pachter said. “Look, games are moving to connected TV. So think about all the participants that are going to deliver games the way we get movies via Netflix, and forget the subscription model. Just think about iOS becoming [available] on your TV.

So free-to-play games on your TV. Who’s going to deliver that? Cloud providers, AI, anybody who’s investing in making that happen is where you want to be.

Sony’s current standing in gaming hardly looks like failure. The PlayStation 5 has generated $159B in sales globally, outpacing its competitors and continuing to dominate the console space.

Sony’s first-party studios remain some of the most critically acclaimed in the industry, with exclusives like Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarök, and The Last of Us pushing hardware sales and building long-term brand loyalty.

Meanwhile, the future Pachter envisions gaming delivered primarily via connected TVs is far from inevitable. Google Stadia’s collapse highlighted the difficulty of cloud-first platforms, and even Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass cloud offerings have struggled to match the reach of traditional consoles.

As for “iOS on TV” becoming the primary gaming delivery method, Apple’s gaming ambitions remain limited compared to Sony’s decades of investment in premium experiences.

This isn’t the first time Pachter has drawn headlines for provocative statements that don’t align with reality. Over the years he has:

  • Predicted the death of physical game sales long before they remained a major revenue stream.
  • Dismissed Nintendo’s Wii before it went on to dominate its generation.
  • Questioned Sony’s resilience in gaming despite it becoming the company’s most profitable division.

For many fans, Pachter’s latest prediction is just another entry in a long list of eyebrow-raising takes. The meme around him has become less about the analysis itself and more about the entertainment value of watching him get it wrong.

I think while the gaming industry in evolving and cloud and subscription services will play a bigger role, the market for them remains very limited.