In an interview with Bloomberg, Nintendo of America's marketing chief George Harrison forecasts North American Wii sales to hit 35 million units by 2011 or 2012. It's a clear sign that Nintendo is expecting the Wii to pull its weight for the forseeable future, despite the shortage debacle which otherwise surrounds the console in many launch territories. On this topic, Harrison again blames the Wii shortage on higher than expected demand.

Interestingly, Harrison also confirms that Nintendo is in no rush to "upgrade" the Wii's hardware anytime soon, particularly in the graphical prowess category. The name of the game for the Wii remains its bid to expand the gaming audience, so "future technology" is not a priority implementation.

"The 35 million target is a bit too optimistic for now as it seems the Wii is targeting light gamers, but the U.S. market has a lot of hard-core game players," said Etsuko Tamura, an analyst with Mizuho Investors Securities Co. in Tokyo. "It's too early to decide whether the Wii will be the winner among game consoles."

"We're starting to see in the performance of the PS3 and Xbox 360 that that's not necessarily motivating the market the way it used to," [Harrison] said. "So we're going to start work on future technology only when we believe it's necessary."

Wolfwood via quote.bloomberg.com »