Wii U "Not quite next-generation" says leading analyst

The Wii U may be Nintendo’s next big home-console hope, but many leading figures in the industry are still unconvinced by Nintendo’s approach to the next-generation of gaming. Influential gaming anaylst, Michael Pchter of Wedbush Securities revealed a fair few reservations in an interview given to Industry Gamers.

“The Wii U is a pretty ambitious undertaking. It’s a new console, with new controls and architecture, but it’s not quite ‘next’ generation,” said Patcher.

“Developers have to contend with differences between the Wii U and current generation consoles, then have to figure out what to do with the controls.”

The lack (so far) of Wii U console-specific exclusives also worried Patcher, who feels Nintendo are hedging their bets too much on the allure of the crazy new screen-packing controller.

“The [launch date] is still up in the air, and as far as I know, there are no significant third party exclusives,” he said. “Instead, we’ll see iterations of third party games already on the market, which is unlikely to drive significant hardware sales.”

“In order for the launch to be hugely successful the console will need three things: a competitive price, compelling first party launch titles, and compelling third party launch titles. We don’t know if the Wii U will have any of these, so it’s quite difficult to predict a hugely successful launch.”

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