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Nintendo: Wii sales have "stalled"
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 30th October 2009
Nintendo's Satoru Iwata has admitted that Wii sales have stalled due to lack of good games and software.
Speaking at a Japanese press conference (reported by VG247), Iwata said that the reason for the slump in sales is an inability to "continually release strong software."
"[We've been] unable to show a new game that can become the next big thing,[/i]" said Iwata. "Once you've lost momentum in the games industry then it can take time to recover."
Iwata said that the recent price drop of the Wii had not affected matter significantly either.
"With the price drop, sales returned to a certain level, but they just did not reach the level of last year around this time," he said. "We decided that it would be difficult to sell enough to recover from the poor performance of the first half of the year."
"In order to reach it [the 20 million units target], we will have to move quite a large quantity, but it's a figure we released after having felt the momentum returning."
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Nintendo have/had access to some great games most of which have been lost, but from a marketing point of view bringing back some of them would increase sales significantly imo. Regardless of whether the games are any good
On the exact same boat as you. I loved the wii when it first came out but with all these annoying things like wii vollyball, wii fit, wii [insert boring sports name here] it's just not the nintendo I used to love. Infact it's probably grown into something I hate.
The appeal of the wii is also it's downfall, there is simply no need to buy that many party games when the select few that are already out are actually already quite good!
Any serious (read: single player) gaming is on the PS3 and as such that's what most of the games I get are for!
-Massive gaps between releases, with some games released months later in Europe/US than Japan.
-Rubbish updates to amazing games like Picmin for example (ie. adjust for control scheme and nothing else)
-Online Multiplayer was dead from the word go (ie. no comparison to xbox live)
-3rd party games that interested adults remained firmly on the 360/PS3 other than the odd one.
-New IP is non existant (other than casual sport games)... the world is fed up of Mario et al.. (Well I am !)
-H/W doesnt cater for more advanced games.
-Quality Control.... the shovelware for the Wii is extraordinary. I pity all those people in tesco's buying such rubbish for their kids.
I have a Wii and enjoy it when playing with others... but it doesnt get played much. I just read a review of dead space extraction for the Wii which I might get, but nothing on the horizon has my attention...
Really need a decent game to take advantage of the motion plus controllers (other than Sports Resort)
Oh... and a HD version (Wii - 2) will not capture the magic sales back either. It was a once in a life time opportunity for Nintendo to cash in on the 'casual' market (which they did).... but once saturated, these people simply dont replace their Wii's ! They are appliances ... like toasters !
That's half of Nintendo's problem as I see it - They rely too much on their staple franchises to sell consoles.
I don't profess to be any kind of expert on economics, business or marketing and Nintendo may have sold massive volumes of the Wii initially, but I think they bought into a false economy by relying so much on the mainstream/casual market.
Actual 'gamers' tend to be more selective in their game purchases, but they also continue to buy games in the long-term, whereas the majority of the casuals (in my experience) who bought the Wii just bought 1 or 2 games (if any, other than Wii Sports or Wii Fit), then got bored of it and packed it away.
That would be fine if the console itself were profitable, but consoles have historically never been profitable, going as far as to make losses in production much of the time - While the games & licensing act as the real source of profit for companies like Sony, Microsoft & Nintendo.
Dedicated gamers could save the Wii if it had a lineup worth the time and investment from fans, but it simply doesn't - It's a successful gimmick but it has no long-term appeal, as evidenced by the many 'actual gamers' who just got bored of the Wii.
Nintendo tried to market the Wii as being casual-gamer-friendly, while still providing the staple franchise games that their fanbase expects (Zelda, Mario, etc) yet both of those markets find themselves bored of the Wii in short time and moving back to other consoles once the novelty wears off and the launch games run their course.
There's something very wrong with that.
If the Wii dropped out of the market I wouldn't shed any tears - Good riddance to casual, mainstream gaming; it's a blight on the artform.
the wii was the only profitable console this generation and they sold millions making profit
So I've heard, and obviously it's highly unlikely that the Wii will drop out of the market, that was just a facetious comment on my part.
I find it unlikely that any profit was made on the sales of the console itself though, unless their use of GameCube-era components actually saved them that much in production costs.
I stand by my points though, Nintendo aren't going to recover that momentum with the Wii without a shakeup of some sort.
Also, there's supposed to be a new Zelda game in the making that's designed specifically for the Wii, whereas Twilight Princess was made for the Gamecube then ported over. Don't know if there'll really be anything groundbreaking with that though, but it's rumoured that it might require Wii Motion Plus - which could mean you actually have to swing the Wii-mote like a sword and have more control of Link. Something I'll probably get as a fan of the series, but I haven't got my hopes up too much.
As for Conker's, that was a Rare title, and Rare were bought by Microsoft ages ago. Hence there was a Bad Fur Day remake on the original X-Box, which was just the same as the N64 for the single player but with updated graphics. The multiplayer in the X-box version, however, was truly awesome imo. The buyout is also why there hasn't been a good Donkey Kong game in a while, and why Banjo-Kazooie has pretty much dropped off the map (there is a B-K game on the X-Box 360, but the series was more at home with the 'family-orientated' Nintendo). It's really a shame that a talented console developer like Rare are tied down to just one system, be it Nintendo or Microsoft.
Nothing for the Wii for ages has made me want to buy it. They should do a good RPG/Puzzler for it.
I think Nintendo need a Wii-i.
They have sold 56 Million which is more than double of what they did with the game Cube which only reached 21 million. Mind you they are only 6 million more than the Snes but the Wii has a long way to go yet.
Wonder if this slow down in sales is now the time they will introduce a new model with DVD or somehting.
iPlayer for instance works ok in the web browser and they have an "app store", allowing the development of additional apps/functionality might be a winner?
I'd MUCH rather have a wii under my TV (due to size etc) to stream iPlayer, watch network video's etc. Big shame it doesn't have DVD playback capability too....
The WII's strongpoint is "gaming together" and yes that's fun!
Yet I've yet to see a WII that comes with more than one controller set.
So I'd like to buy a WII and play with two people and have..oh three games:
200 for the WII with one controler set and one game.
20 for the motionplus thingy (as it's not included in the bundle
80 for the second controller set (remote+nunchuck+motionplus)
80-100 for 2 additional games.
That's 400 for some "casual" gaming. Hmmmm, I wonder why I've been waiting and not buying for over 2 years? ;)