"Wii 2 May Appear Sooner Than You Think"

It seems that everyone wants to have a dig at Nintendo these days. First there was former Sensible Software boss Jon Hare having a good old rant, and now Codemasters CEO Rod Cousens has waded in with his own unique brand of criticism, even going as far as to suggest that the Wii’s dominance isn’t as assured as many people believe.

In an interview with GameDaily BIZ, Cousens had this to say:

The global event that's been marked as a surprise for most people is the huge success that Nintendo's achieved in every territory. The challenge that third-party software publishers face in supporting that market is that it's clearly a market dominated by the first party and always has been.

If you look back at the Nintendo track record over the last 20-25 years, it's a typical situation where Nintendo will take 60-70 percent of the market and third parties will compete for the remaining 40 percent. One of the challenges is: will that result in a sudden flood of software by third parties onto a platform that's currently seen as the Holy Grail, and as a consequence there's a lot of wastage?

I think this cycle has got a long way to go and it's certainly not over. Anyone writing off Sony and Microsoft do so at their peril. I could give you an argument that says there's going to be a 'Wii 2' pretty quickly because [Nintendo would need one] in order to sustain momentum over a 10-year period. And what type of software would it have then? Because right now it isn't driven by technological supremacy or power. I wonder if the idea of opening up a whole new audience to 60-year-olds looking to make sure their brain cells don't die off is a sustainable form of entertainment. Maybe they got it right because we are all an aging population in Western markets, but I somehow think as a form of entertainment that won't be the case.

Poor old Nintendo. As soon as they start being successful again, it seems that everyone wants to knock them down. The cads.