Take-Two eyes Wii baseball

After the Nintendo Wii's impressive showing at the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, more companies are looking at the machine as a viable platform for their products. The latest to jump on the bandwiigon is Take-Two Interactive, publisher of games such as the Grand Theft Auto and Civilization series.

In a postearnings conference call with investors and analysts, Take-Two CFO Karl Winters fielded a question with regards to the company's plans for the Wii.

"The reception this platform received at the E3 show, you know, is one that makes us take a real strong look at it," he said. "And as we grow our sports business, there are opportunities with our sports games to extend them to the Wii system, particularly if you look at baseball where we have exclusive arrangement, as well as, you know, some of the other sports games, which would play extremely well on the Wii product, the nonlicensed league ones."

He went on to say that the appearance of 2K Sports games on the Wii would likely happen in late 2007 or 2008. The company's MLB 2K franchise is, as Winters mentioned, a likely candidate to appear on the Wii. Take-Two currently owns the third-party rights to make MLB-licensed games.

Aside from the baseball portion of Wii Sports, Nintendo has not yet announced a first-party baseball game for the Wii. The company did have a baseball game in the works for the GameCube, titled Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball, but eventually canceled it. Some presumed it was canceled to develop that series on Nintendo's next-gen console.