Michael Pachter is an analyst for Wedbush Securities who has made a name for himself in gaming circles by waxing lyrical over the state of the industry and marketplace. Sometimes he gets it right, sometimes he gets it wrong. But he’s always entertaining.

NowGamer recently spoke to Pachter, along with fellow analysts Jesse Divnich and Mike Hickey, about the chances of the PS Vita, Sony’s new premium handheld games console, succeeding. He said:

“I think it has limited appeal. It is clearly best in class for handhelds, but the handheld market is shrinking due to cannibalization from iOS and smartphones. I think the addressable market is probably half of its former size because of smartphones, so Vita and 3DS are destined to slug it out for scraps.”

“The Vita is really slick, but it costs the same as a PS3, so it is unlikely that anyone who doesn’t yet have a console will buy one. If a PS3 owner considers it, they will probably enjoy the interoperability with their console; 360 owners obviously less so. [I doubt it will] have as much appeal to parents with small children or to more casual gamers.”

I don’t normally agree with Michael Pachter. And even when I do I find his know-it-all attitude of “this is fact rather than opinion” a little annoying to say the least. But on this occasion I cannot fault him.

The PS Vita will sell to the hardcore who have money and are willing to spend it on games. But the rest of us will be happy playing Angry Birds on our iPhones and Androids. Do you agree? Or do you think Pachter and I both need to give Sony a break on this one?

Casual gamers thought they’d stumbled upon a huge win a couple of days ago when Pokemon Yellow appeared on on the iTunes Apps Store. Unfortunately the old adage that some things are too good to be true proved correct on this occasion.

It turns out this Pokemon Yellow was nothing more than a fake. Those who paid their 99 cents to download and install the app on their iDevices found that the game didn’t work. If there was even a game there to begin with. Either way this was anything but official.

People really should know better. This was from a company called ‘House Of Anime’ rather than Nintendo. It cost just 99 cents. And there were 1,300 reviews, the vast majority negative, that should have stopped Pokemon Yellow from reaching the top of the Paid Apps chart. But it reached the top regardless.

The game has now been removed, with Apple finally acting. But how did fake Pokemon Yellow get on iTunes to begin with? I thought Apple prided itself on its robust approval process for all apps and iTunes content?

This should tell Nintendo something though… release the real Pokemon Yellow on iTunes for a fair price and the money will roll in.

The Devil May Cry series has a lot of fans. And I mean A LOT of fans. Many of whom were not only disappointed but absolutely sickened by the first trailer for DmC: Devil May Cry.

This is the new game, and it’s a completely different take on the series and characters than what we have previously seen. DmC: Devil May Cry takes place in a parallel universe, so we see a younger Dante and a whole new style of gameplay. In essence this is a reboot, which is bound to worry fans of the original who don’t want to see wholesale changes made.

According to NowGamer, one person who has sought to calm the nerves of the fans is Devil May Cry 3 director Hideaki Itsuno. He recently said:

“I can’t go into too much detail [Laughs] but I was in Cambridge earlier this week to attend a meeting regarding the game. I just want to say, don’t worry about the game at all, it’s going to be awesome. We’re sure that a lot of people are going to be pretty blown away by it.”

I must admit I wasn’t exactly enamored by the first trailer I saw, but this extended gameplay reveal has assured me that while different, DmC: Devil May Cry won’t necessarily be worse. In fact, it looks a hell of a lot of fun. We’ll only know for sure when it’s released later this year.

Due to a lack of time and money I don’t get to play as many new games as I’d like to. And when I do I tend to dip in and out of them like a casual gamer rather than get engrossed like a hardcore gamer.

This means I have to keep my eyes firmly fixed on my favorite reviewers in order to know what I should be spending my money on and my time playing. Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw is one of the best. Not only because he’s very harsh on games and picks up on even their slightest faults, but because he’s funny too.

Embedded below is his Zero Punctuation review of Resident Evil: Revelations on the Nintendo 3DS.

It’s clear Croshaw enjoyed playing Resident Evil: Revelations, he just wishes different decisions had been taken in terms of plot development and dodge controls. This counts as a positive review in the world of Zero Punctuation.

Unfortunately I won’t be getting a copy of Resident Evil: Revelations, because I haven’t got a 3DS to play it on! If you’re reading, Nintendo, help a poor games geek out…

Journey has been in development for what seems like years. It is years, in fact. Which wouldn’t be anything unusual were this a full-priced game with a big budget and a lot riding on its success. But it isn’t.

For those not aware of its existence, Journey is a game from the Thatgamescompany team behind Flow and Flower. It has a unique look and feel to it, and the gameplay is about as far removed from the likes of Call of Duty and Skyrim as you can imagine.

Journey, as you can see from the video embedded above, was conceived to be an experience rather than just a game. And I’m definitely buying it when it arrives on PSN. But when?

March 13 in the U.S., March 14 in Europe, and March 15 in Japan, apparently. The price has been set at around a quarter of the price normal games go for, so $15 in the States, £10 in the U.K. Which, if the game is as good as the previews suggest, is an absolute bargain.

Every day seems to bring more news (or at least rumors and speculation) surrounding one of the next-generation consoles. Which is amazing seeing as only one – the Nintendo Wii U – even officially exists.

Most people, both in and out of the industry, expect Microsoft to make the next move. It could be this year, it could be next year, or it could be in 2014 or beyond. We just don’t know. We don’t know much else about it either, if we’re all honest with each other.

However, Kotaku is reporting that the next Xbox hardware now has an official codename, and it’s citing several unnamed sources for the news. That codename is… Durango, as you no doubt realized 5 minutes ago after reading the title of this post.

Thankfully Durango is nothing more than a codename. And it’s unlikely to stick. After all, the Dreamcast was the Katana and the Wii was the Revolution. Before Sega and Nintendo respectively saw sense and changed the names.

I still don’t think it’ll be Xbox 8 though. That’s just dumb.

Twisted Metal isn’t doing too badly on Metacritic at present, with a 79 Metascore and an 8.6 User score. However, once the novelty factor of having Twisted Metal back wears off I can see both scores dropping wildly.

The problems with this game in particular – bad voice acting, poor graphics, no plot, unrealistic physics – are one thing (or several, in fact), but the issues run deeper than that. Twisted Metal is a game from a bygone era, and it doesn’t belong in 2012.

That isn’t me being snobby, but the genre of car combat feels out-of-date, the visuals are woefully outdated, and something about it just feels very off. It’s as though the last five years never happened.

Some people will love Twisted Metal on the PS3. Franchise fanboys, obviously. And those who value gameplay above all else and can therefore blank out all the missteps and mistakes. The rest of us will remain thoroughly underwhelmed and switch back to playing Call of Duty or Skyrim forthwith.

L.A. Noire was a commercial and critical success, a rare double-win in these days when too many developers take the easy route in order to ensure sales but not necessarily the quality of the title.

Team Bondi, the Australian developer behind the game, no longer exists, having gone under at the end of 2011. However, that doesn’t mean there won’t be a L.A. Noire sequel. One day. Possibly.

As noticed by GameBlurb, a Q&A on Rockstar Games’ website shows the publisher is keeping its options open going forward:

While there won’t be any more DLC or additional content for the current release of L.A. Noire (we’re all too busy working on Max Payne 3, GTAV and other games to come), don’t count out the possibility of a new game in the L.A. Noire franchise in the future. We simply have not decided anything. We’re all very pleased with how that game turned out and are considering what the future may hold for L.A. Noire as a series. We don’t always rush to make sequels, but that does not mean we won’t get to them eventually – see Max and Red Dead for evidence of that – we have so many games we want to make and the issue is always one of bandwidth and timing.

Rockstar Games published L.A. Noire and, crucially, retained the intellectual property rights. This means they could, if they so desired, make a sequel in the future.

I personally hope they do, because the game is a truly unmissable experience. But not before they deliver GTA V and a sequel to Red Dead Redemption.

I’m one of the few (relatively speaking) people who bought Modnation Racers on the PS3. I have been a big fan of karting games down the years, from Mario to Crash and everything in between. And I was intrigued enough by the concept of creating your own racers, karts, and tracks to give it a go.

Modnation Racers wasn’t at all bad, but it was also far from perfect. The online portion of the game left a lot to be desired, and the actual racing mechanics didn’t feel as natural as previous titles. Things that could be resolved in a sequel…

That isn’t likely to happen now, but a game titled LittleBigPlanet Karting was teased last week during Playstation Destination. This will be Modnation Racers done right, with added Sackboy as the icing on the cake.

If Media Molecule, the development team behind LittleBigPlanet, is making the karting spin-off then it’s almost guaranteed to be brilliant. No more details on LittleBigPlanet Karting are yet available, but I’m already looking forward to it despite this. Bring it on.

Back in the day when I started gaming, which is probably before many of you were born, games were tough to beat. Certainly tougher than they are today. Which means I rarely saw the endings of games.

This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, however, as most game endings sucked. Possibly because developers knew so few people would ever experience the endings they didn’t spend any time or money on them.

That has all changed now. Games are easier to beat these days, generally being shorter experiences. And devs actually bother creating satisfying endings in order to reward gamers who stick with a title right through to the end.

Some are better than others, and the Guinness World Records 2012: Gamer’s Edition recently ran a poll (via Digital Spy) to determine the Top 10 Game Endings Of All Time.

Call of Duty: Black Ops
Halo: Reach
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
God of War
Red Dead Redemption
Portal
Metal Gear Solid 4
Final Fantasy VII
Heavy Rain

I’ve seen the endings of five of those games, and I was impressed by all of them. I found Red Dead Redemption particularly satisfying, maybe because it didn’t end in a typical Hollywood fashion. How about you? Let us know in the comments section below…