Tretton: 360 "running out of steam," Nintendo makes "babysitting tools"

SCEA CEO Jack Tretton has taken some serious pot shots at both Nintendo and Microsoft in a new interview with Fortune today, launching an unprecedented attack on Wii, 360 and Nintendo's portable consoles.

Tretton tried to again make the case that the Playstation 3 is "just hitting its stride" with regards to the console's hardware, which includes both a hard drive and a Blu-Ray player.

Related to Wii and the Xbox 360, Tretton said: "They're starting to run out of steam now in terms of continuing to be relevant in 2011 and beyond."

He added: "I mean, you've gotta be kidding me. Why would I buy a gaming system without a hard drive in it? How does this thing scale?"

He also took a shot against Microsoft's Kinect motion controller. Tretton said: "Motion gaming is cute, but if I can only wave my arms six inches, how does this really feel like I'm doing true accurate motion gaming?"

And what about Nintendo's portable family of consoles? Tretton said: "Our view of the 'Game Boy experience' is that it's a great babysitting tool, something young kids do on airplanes, but no self-respecting twenty-something is going to be sitting on an airplane with one of those. He's too old for that."

Tretton's remarks will not go down well with either the competition or fans. PS3 was claimed recently to have a higher "active user base" than Xbox 360, but is still lagging in terms of raw sales.

Wii sales far eclipse those of PS3, meaning that in terms of basic sales, PS3 trails both Microsoft and Nintendo's current gen machines.

3DS launched in Japan in February and in the west last month.