A source of debate

Earlier today we reported that the Gears of War developer expects Wii U success, so it would be remiss of us to not report the alternative viewpoint of well-known Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter. On his regular GameTrailers show, Pachter answered a question about whether Wii U would face a similar fate to Dreamcast, an excellent console from SEGA that ultimately failed to achieve sales success. Part of his response was as follows:

I think that if in fact it’s a lot like an Xbox 360 in terms of graphics, frame rate and control scheme, then it’s probably not going to sell well unless it’s priced a lot cheaper, and I don’t think they’re launching the console at $150. So, yeah I think they are about to Dreamcast themselves. I don’t think Wii U is going to be as popular as probably Nintendo thinks it’s going to be.

Question is, what does Nintendo do next, and I don’t know the answer yet. Let’s see how Wii U sells, and I’m not going to predict this demise until I know pricing and features. When I know more about it, I’ll offer a better opinion.

We'd suggest that before criticism is levelled at this viewpoint, it should be acknowledged that Pachter does admit that he needs more details to offer a more solid opinion. He also reiterated his belief in this show that Wii U should have been released sooner, perhaps as early as 2009: there's the argument that this console will inevitably be outgunned, in terms of graphical technology at least, within a couple of years of release.

The Wii succeeded with limited hardware but an innovative concept, so do you think Wii U will have to do the same, and if it does will it be able to do so? It's all speculation until full details of the console's capabilities are known, but with two prominent figures in the industry having such different views, its an interesting debate.

[source gametrailers.com]