Though the next generation of Xbox has yet to be seen, industry analyst Michael Pachter says that it will "win" the console war against the PlayStation 4 and Wii U, with the Wii U falling dramatically behind the other consoles in terms of sales.
At his presentation at the SXSW Festival, Pachter gave several predictions for each next-gen system. He predicted that the next Xbox rumored Skype/Kinect 2.0 bundle and the TV tuner feature are both "killer apps" for the system, and thus will help the system outsell the other two.
While he predicted that Sony will have strong sales, the system will be "still playing catch-up", despite the strengths of Gaikai and the system's content. Meanwhile, though Pachter said that Nintendo's software is "still king", the hardware itself will be challenged, and that the company's handheld system will lose ground to mobile phones/tablets.
But even after declaring Microsoft the winner of the next-gen war (before it even starts), he still predicted that the next Xbox and the PlayStation 4 will sell in the same range of figures. he predicted that both systems will sell in the 85-95 million units range for their lifetimes, while the Wii U will fall far shorter than those figures (30-50 million units at the current rate of sales).
Pachter reasons that "...the Wii U is too similar to current generation consoles, and priced too close to likely launch prices for PS4 and Durango (the alleged name for the next Xbox) to thrive."
The PlayStation 4 is set to come out around the holidays, with the next Xbox supposedly following suit. The next Xbox has yet to be officially revealed, though the system is expected to be announced sometime in April.
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