Sony rep: Wii is an 'impulse buy'

In a move that will be sure to anger die-hard Nintendo fans, Sony Computer Entertainment America spokesman Dave Karraker has critised Nintendo's Wii in an interview with The New York Times, saying that the system didn't belong in the same category as the PlayStation 3.

"Wii could be considered an impulse buy more than anything else," Karraker was quoted as saying.

The Sony spokesman also told the paper that Sony was selling out shipments of 100,000 PS3s in the US every week, although, "the frenzy we saw at the holidays has subsided a bit."

The article ran today under the headline, 'Nintendo's Wii, Radiating Fun, Is Eclipsing Sony Machine'. It discussed each machine's relative performance over the recent Christmas sales period and noted that PS3 systems have been easier to find in the shops than the Wii.

In the past, Karraker has been fairly critical of his gaming rivals at Microsoft. In September, Karraker called Microsoft's decision to release an HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 that only plays movies "unfortunate", adding that the company's 1080p update for the system wasn't "full HD".

Two months later, he slammed Microsoft's decision to offer high-definition movies and TV shows for download over Xbox Live as "a disservice to their consumer base" because purchasers of the Xbox 360 Core system would need to buy a hard drive to store the large files.