Baby Faces

SEGA executive Scott Steinberg has been flapping his gums about the long-term prospects of the Nintendo Wii. In a direct response to those comments, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter reasons that, while concerns about the hardware had merit, it was entirely possible that Nintendo could release a new and improved model of the Wii within the next few years.

“It’s easy to envision a Wii 2 in a couple of years that runs at full HD, and has both a Wii-mote and an analog controller, so that all games can be ported to it. If Nintendo were to introduce such a device, it would be fully comparable to the Xbox 360 - perhaps it wouldn’t have Blu-ray, so a comparison to the PS3 may be unfair - and would likely have most of the same third party content as the other two devices.”

This Pachter fellow has been known to make outlandish predictions in the past, but on this score he’s very probably right. Nintendo already has a track history of releasing upgraded versions of their hardware within 12 months of the initial launch period. Unfortunately, Pachter agrees with Steinberg that the PS3 will still come out on top… but what do they know?