No one expected the Wii boom to last forever, and eyes have been on Nintendo lately as profits have begun to decline, with people wondering what Nintendo may have up its sleeve to remedy the situation.
President Satoru Iwata explained during an Investor Relations meeting that, rather than being driven to cut the price of the Wii as a result of mounting pressure from Sony and Microsoft, “underperformances were attributed primarily to the lack of continuous release of software titles which could strongly drive hardware sales and price cut of Wii hardware.”
Nintendo Dpad reports that Animal Crossing and Wii Music failed to drive sales of hardware as Nintendo had hoped, leaving them a high and dry come Springtime. “Interesting enough though, Nintendo could have been in a better position had they not delayed Wii Sports Resort, which was supposed to come out in the spring. We have a feeling they regretted that decision greatly after the price cut.”
Of course, more and better promotion of titles they do have could have helped. Just this past weekend, I was over at a family member’s house and he was lamenting the lack of racing games on the Wii as we played Mario Kart Wii– he had never even known Excitebots existed until I had told him.
Moving back to the games of the here, now, and near future, Iwata says that “We are aiming to regain the momentum during the upcoming sales season, and we are well in a position to do so.” Part of that no doubt lies in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which despite its lukewarm reception upon being unveiled at E3 is expected to bring in some big numbers.
“Nintendo banked on WiiMusic being an evergreen title that could follow in the footsteps of WiiFit, sales were not up to par, and console sales slowly dropped,” Nintendo Dpad notes. “The result of all of this? E3 Nintendo shows us a new 2D Mario, 3D Mario, Metroid, and announces Wii Zelda is coming. Got a gut feeling Nintendo won’t make this mistake again.”
As for the effects of the price cut itself, the results have apparently been good, but not great: “With the price drop, sales returned to a certain level, but they just did not reach the level of last year around this time,” Iwata stated. “Wii has stalled. We were unable to continually release strong software, and let the nice mood cool.”
As another Dpad post points out, Nintendo was able to ride on Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl last year. “Those 3 have combined for an astounding 50 million copies sold,” they add, “and were in the top 5 NDP all year, from release through Christmas.”
This holiday season, things are expected to be different, thanks to the likes of Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit Plus, and of course, New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Dpad predicts that when sales pick up again, analysts will attribute it to the price cut, rather than “the real reason, content.” They add that if Nintendo had the content in place, a price cut may not have been necessary.
It appears the last holiday season and first part of this year have helped to serve Nintendo a bit of a wake-up call. Hopefully they can keep a pot on so that they will be ready for whatever comes next.
