Analyst Michael Pachter from Wedbush Morgan (a financial services and investment firm) has told GamesIndustry.biz that he believes a higher spec, HD-enabled "Wii 2" could be on the shelves "in a couple of years".

According to GamesIndustry.biz Michael Pachter was commenting as a response to SEGA exec Scoot Steinburg's recently published views that the Wii was only going to be a winner in the short term.

"I think that a lot of people consider the Wii a "fad", and attribute that conclusion to the type of people who have been attracted to the Wii so far," Pachter said, observing that many publishers "don't know what to do with" the new demographics of female and older gamers.

Discussing the Wii's future, Pachter states that he could see a revamped version of Nintendo's popular console not too far down the line:

"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."

Both Pachter and Steinburg agree on one point - that the PS3 "will ultimately come out on top".

GamesIndustrybiz.com reports that Pachter believes that the price point is key, and points out that 80 per cent of all Xboxes sold in the US were purchased for $199 or less, with the figure approximately the same for PlayStation 2.

Pachter predicts that the so-far relatively unsuccessful PS3 will see victory in about 2011 as a result of the success of Blu-ray, and after the console see a price cut to $199.

News today suggests that Sony is only too aware of the need to drop the PS3's high price - Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer has acknowledged the importance of a price drop for the console's success and indicated that the company were trying to calculate how much they could afford to cut off the price, but did not give any definite timescale for a reduction.

>> Link - to original story on Gamesindustry.biz