Nintendo Revolution prediction: second console of choice

We're here at the Games Marketing Conference in San Francisco. The first session consisted of a trends overview, but there were some good nuggets of truth (and opinion) bandied about, including a warning by Michael Pachter, the oft-quoted managing director of research at Wedbush Morgan Securities.

Pachter warned, "People have written off the Revolution and that's foolish."

The meat of his argument comes down to the fact that there will be few killer exclusives on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. The Grand Theft Auto series that was so instrumental in selling the PlayStation 2 will be available on both Xbox 360 and PS3. Meanwhile, Microsoft has little unique leverage either: "Microsoft has one game now: it's Halo, and everything else sucks," he said. Pachter predicted that households today that own both a PS2 and an Xbox will be more likely to own either an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3 and a Nintendo Revolution as Nintendo's first-party development generates interest in that console and its unique gameplay.