Ten million MotionPluses by year's end? That's what one analyst predicts for Nintendo's new peripheral...

Everyone's favourite gaming analyst Michael Pachter has been speaking to Edge about all things MotionPlus, and layed out his expectations of the device's success. The Wedbush Morgan prophet seems to believe that the bundling of MotionPlus with various games will ultimately be what puts it in most homes:

"I think around 20 percent of Wii owners in the US and Europe will have bought Wii Sports Resort, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 or EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis, so that's around eight million. I think another two million will buy MotionPlus with new consoles...

"I expect MotionPlus to be a sneaky success (like Wii Fit), and ultimately attach to at least one third of the [Wii's] installed base."

However, EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich is slighly more reluctant to predict a straight-away success for MotionPlus.

"At this time, we do know that pre-orders are relatively strong, compared to other Wii products. By the end of the holidays, the Wii MotionPlus install base in North America and Europe should be well over three million. Of course, our forecast could be conservative... Yearly sales could balloon much higher.

"For the Wii MotionPlus, we currently expect the install base to reach over 11 million units by the end of Nintendo's next fiscal year in March 2011, a 15 percent penetration."

Both analysts also spoke of Red Steel 2 - MotionPlus' poster-child for many Wii gamers. The pair noted that the decision to make the game MotionPlus-only is a risky one, but also believe that the focus on just one control scheme would recuce development resources can could end up going Ubisoft's way in terms on critical success. Patcher and Divnich both expect Red Steel 2 to ship as a bundle with MotionPlus later this year.

Elaborating on the sales prospect for the title, Divnich was optimistic for the shooter/slasher:

"If Ubisoft can create a compelling title and get the MotionPlus packaging, Red Steel 2 could become a breakout hit in the holiday season. Currently, we forecast Red Steel 2 to sell over 1.2 million units by the end of Ubisoft's fiscal year in March 2010, but we do note that there could be a great fluctuation to our estimate, more so than any other Ubisoft title, due to the unpredictability of demand in the Wii market."

Wii MotionPlus finally releases in Europe on June 12th - four days after the US date.