It's only been on sale for a week in the States, and doesn't even hit UK shelves until Friday 30 November, but already games industry luminaries are predicting Nintendo's Wii U console will be a failure.

Nolan Bushnell, Atari founder and creator of Pong (making him pretty much the godfather of video games) has offered his two cents on Nintendo's latest and greatest machine, and hasn't been all that flattering.

"I actually am baffled by it," he said, speaking to the New York Times. "I don't think it's going to be a big success."

"It feels like the end of an era to me," said Bushnell, believing that the current generation of consoles already have enough power and graphical performance to deliver practically any experience a developer can imagine. In this regard, it's not just the Wii U that Bushnell has a problem with, but the proposed Xbox 720 and PS4 consoles too.

"These things will continue to sputter along, but I really don't think they'll be of major import ever again," he concluded.

In Nintendo's defence, the Wii U does offer a unique home console experience, thanks to its hybrid, second-screen tablet controller. However, the mobile gaming market's growth can't be underestimated, and in these penny pinching times a 69p iPad or iPhone app may have more appeal than a comparatively expensive home console game.

http://www.techdigest.tv/2012/11/wii_u_pong_crea.html

_____

Yup even the guy who invented pong is predicting Wii U failure. Reggie's body better be ready for this.

Atari was relevant for a decade back in the 70's and 80's. You might as well ask the inventor of the cell phone what they think of the iPhone 5.

Of course, it remains to be seen, especially what kind of 'success'.

As far as I´m concerned, I don´t think the Wii U be as successful as the Wii let alone surpass it (in sales numbers), but I think it´ll do alright and be profitable.It´ll end up being Nintendo´s second best selling home console, I think...behind the Wii, ahead of the NES (by how much, big question).

Let's see if Wii U will surpass Atari 5200 sales and this guy pongs.

The fact that Nintendo just announced first-week sales as being 25% higher than the Wii's makes me lol at this guy.

not just wii u, but all next gen consoles he said. I dont think so. at least 2-3 more gens before we may see the normal console life cycle fail.

The writing's on the wall? Hopefully, we will soon be entering an era where a universal video game console will hit the market and everybody develops for it (Not talking about the PC because it sucks.). Give it enough power to run virtually any game and allow for things like the Wii U Pad to be used as peripherals.

For gaming to reach that next level, we have to get away from the whole "You need a Nintendo to play Nintendo games/You need an Xbox to play Halo" mentality. I can watch a movie from any studio on my DVD/Blu Ray player. I can listen to any song from anybody on my CD/MP3 player. I need three different machines (or more) to play any game I want to.

All these experts are always talking about the devices (consoles) and never the games. When we start to get games which offer same kind of quality as consoles/pc on mobile devices than they can say these things. Till than they just come out bit of goofs.

Well to be honest, in 10-20 years time we probably won't even need consoles. Games will just be in cloud and all you'll need is a fast internet connection. So you'll probably just have to buy individual games digitally and never have to worry about missing out on exclusives or whatever. I look forward to such a day.

Well, if anyone knows about failing, it's Atari. Although as someone who can predict who will succeed and who will fail? I doubt this guy has any special knowledge.