New York City, New York

Noting recent declines in game industry sales compared to last year’s results, many Wall Street analysts have suggested console price cuts might help spur apathetic consumer spending, but maverick analyst Bryan Bitard with Wellington Pascale Securities says just the opposite. The WPS veteran has staked out an unusual position with an equally unusual line of reasoning. “This isn’t the time to cut. It’s the time to ratchet up those prices as high as they’ll go,” says Bitard. “Imagine that you’re going to get a dollar for every step you take up Mt. Everest; you’d want to start out at the very bottom, wouldn’t you? Well, that’s like this market. The worse it is, the more chance you’ll have to do better down the road. So the best thing to do is drive the market straight into the ground by jacking up prices. I gotta tell you, I don’t get where these other guys are coming from. Are they just idiots or what?”

This isn’t the first time Bitard has put his neck on the line with unsubstantiated economic theories. In 2005, Bitard speculated that Nintendo was about to release a novel gaming system based on motion controls, but believing that the technology would cause nausea and bowel cramps, he placed a sell order on all company stocks that began with the letter “N”.

“Yeah, I gotta admit that one  didn’t quite pan out,” Bitard confessed to IGNN financial correspondent Rondo Nobson. “True story–my butt cheeks still clench every time I try to play Wii Sports Tennis.”