Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello has confessed that the company had been "on the wrong horse" when it chose to focus its development efforts on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and admitted that "not a lot of people anticipated the success of Nintendo." EA, which recently lost its biggest third-party publisher status to Activision, opted to side primarily with Sony and Microsoft’s platforms during the transition period between consoles, instead of Nintendo’s unproven Wii.

Yet with the Wii already strongly outselling the PS3, and being tipped to overtake the Xbox 360 in the coming months, Riccitiello was in a reflective mood at today’s EA investor meeting. Calling fiscal 2007 "the toughest year in the company’s history," Riccitiello added, "[The last transition] was tough because we typically have two to three platforms and a five year period.

"One of the biggest challenges, of course, was that not a lot of people anticipated the success of Nintendo that they’ve shown with their wand controller and their Wii. That got ahead of us a little more than our expectations."

Not that EA can be accused of failing to react to the Wii’s booming success. In June, the company formed EA Casual Games, a new division that was almost certainly inspired by the arrival of new gamers in the market that had discovered gaming through the Wii or Nintendo DS.