Iwata: AC Wii, Wii Music To Blame

By Jorge Ba-oh 10.08.2009 8

Iwata: AC Wii, Wii Music To Blame on Nintendo gaming news, videos and discussion

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has discussed reasons why the company started the year with a 60% profit decline, and how to make up for it this year.

As part of a follow-up question and answer session after first-quarter results, Iwata reflected on the holiday season 2008. On the Wii front there were two main offerings from the Japanese giant - Wii Music and Animal Crossing: Let's go to the City, and despite having good enough sales figures, 2.65m and 3.38m copies respectively, didn't meet Nintendo's expectations. The company president felt there was a lack of longevity that there was, and is, with games like Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit.

We find that the reason of downturn in Wii sales can be attributed to two main factors - we could not launch Wii Sports Resort earlier and could not make the software launched in the last holiday season have longer tails.

Nintendo's hoping that the launch of Wii Sports Resort, New Super Mario Bros. and Wii Fit Plus will see improved performance from last year, with Iwata predicting that each could sell around 10 million units around the globe this year.

These three titles have already been available for hands-on demonstrations at E3 this year. They were highly evaluated by most of those who actually tried them. Distributors also gave feedback like 'The key player of this holiday season will be Nintendo as expected.

What do you think of Nintendo's approach to 2009? Will this threesome of Nintendo names be enough to get through the holiday season?

Box art for Wii Sports Resort
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European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date Out now   Australian release date Out now   

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thisissuperk is offline. thisissuperk 10.08.2009#1

Probably will via casual gamers for the most part but next year should be great with the possibility of being more focused on the hardcore gamers.
Metroid: Other M, Super Mario Galaxy 2, the new Zelda Wii and who knows what else could be announced next year.
It seems like it could be a good year for the gamers next year.
Though that's how it should have been since Wii was released.
The casual crowd will only stick around for so long.

 
Canyarion is offline. Canyarion 10.08.2009#2

I'm actually really glad with this. Hopefully they learned their lesson. You won't get away with making crappy games!

 
AnDeeRoo is offline. AnDeeRoo 10.08.2009#3

I really wish they'd announce something new and original. Don't get me wrong, I love all the key franchises (Mario, Zelda etc), but I want Nintendo to surprise everyone like they did with 'Pikmin' on the Gamecube (then again, that wasn't exactly a 'hot' sell.)

Despite the whole 'casual' controversy though these past few years, I still have faith in the big N.

 
satsubatsu347 is offline. satsubatsu347 10.08.2009#4

Now who can third party devs complain about now that The Big N has (essentially) admitted that bad games do not sell? Even theirs.

 
Canyarion is offline. Canyarion 10.08.2009#5

Except that even Nintendo's bad games sell more than 2.5 million copies.

 
erv is offline. erv 10.08.2009#6

Hm this is really good news. They know they have a larger demographic, and now they realize that in order to keep that, you gotta feed the roots.

Crappy stuff just won't cut it long term. Which means that there will be better offerings for us more frequent gamers.

I like how they communicate their evaluations. Hope they act accordingly. I'm in for at least new super mario wii, and galaxy 2 will be a must buy. I'll buy wii sports resort after finishing little king's story (that game is brilliant, everybody go get it now and pay double for it!) so at least two thirds of those will end up with me Smilie

 
PMD is offline. PMD 11.08.2009#7

Focusing on the hardcore market has proven to be not a financially successful decision. With sales of Pikmin being less than half of Wii Music and F-Zero GX selling only 250 thousand, there is a clear division between critical acclaim and sales.

Even if Nintendo made a great "core" game based off a new IP, it won't sell unless it appeals to the casual audience too.

 
vivisapprentice is offline. vivisapprentice 11.08.2009#8

I come from Australasia and have been pretty dissapointed with the Nintendo published releases, at the end of last year we had wii music, warioland, Disaster and Animal Crossing released. Ive picked up Disaster and warioland which were okay games, but AC didnt really appeal and no way was i getting music.

Now the only things weve had this year have been old gamecube new play control titles except sports resort which only came out recently. Looks like were getting Punchout! but delayed way behind the rest of the world and doubt we'll be seeing Excitebots(which could be fun), and what happened to mario sluggers???

Now for the rest of the year the only titles to be released are metroid trilogy, fit plus, NSMBwii and Endless Ocean 2, nothing real pants wetting exciting, and third party games arent picking up the slack with anything good.

Roll on 2010 which should be nintendos best year in along time

 

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