At E3 Reggie Fils-Aime let the world know he wasn’t satisfied with the sales progress of the Wii or DS in 2007 and hopes Nintendo can do better this year. Perhaps Nintendo is playing the humble card? No doubt they bragged about their 10 million sales of the Wii and 20 million sales of the DS but quickly followed it by saying they’re not satisfied.
Or, is this a threat?
Nintendo has built some steep competition while both Sony and Microsoft scoff at their product and tell everyone its a novelty and it doesn’t really “count” in this next-generation console battle. It doesn’t count… really?
Perhaps Microsoft and Sony are right; maybe every Wii owner that wanted a PlayStation 3 and/or an Xbox 360 purchased their console too. There may be some truth to that as hardcore gamers may purchase a Wii for many reasons:
- They want every console so they have the widest array of game purchases
- They’re hardcore nature forces them to spend money on all products
- They want to get their kids in on gaming early, to grow them up in their image
- Mob mentality, if everyone has a Wii you must as well!
- The technology is cool and you want to be there for its inception
It seems they don’t feel a threat because Wii is a non-gamer console and thus attracts a different crowd… yet they’re both mimicking some of the motion sensing in their own controllers and playing nice towards “casual games” and non-gamers of late. Maybe their not threatened, but impressed?
Fils-Aime isn’t impressed with their sales figures, perhaps because he expected a higher degree of Wii sales by now, but the fact that people cannot purchase them two years into production has hurt sales figures. Although 10 million units sold is an impressive figure, knowing you had such higher potential if the product was actually on the shelves has to hurt a bit of your pride.
The DS sales were impressive considering the product has been in the market for awhile and is easier to find (minus the holiday rush). We’re not sure why he’s not satisfied with the figures, but inspiring a higher degree of DS sales will require some work. Perhaps this is why they’ve gone with the GTA Chinatown approach; using the GTA name to grow their DS sales figures?
It will be interesting to see how Wii does through the next few quarters and if sales slow down now that we’re a few years into the product. What was the last home console Nintendo owned to get this high of a demand?
Perhaps none.
XBLA offers great opportunities for the indy developer but everything comes at a price. Over the last three years Braid‘s developer
@ Black Friday 2012
I was pretty disappointed in how “Black Friday” was handled in Romania. Plenty of retailers increased the price a week before, so that they could do a 40% slash to get the price back to the old value.
@Nintendo Power’s last issue released
It also depends how many people want it. Here’s an example: our major cable provider decided to not renew the contract it had with Discovery Channel. Why? Because just 0.9% of the people watched it.
How many people read “Nintendo Power”?
@Blizzard acquired ‘Project Blackstone‘ domain
It could be a preventive buy, I guess. Still, not really hyped about it, Blizzard lost me since always-online DRM; last game I played from them was Warcraft III and Frozen Throne.
@Dead Island: Riptide banned in Germany
Funny though, there are plenty of games (not just Gears of War) where players blow other human-like character to bits, and those are still available in Germany.
But hey, what do I know, perhaps the baddies in those games bleed green goo …
@QOTW: No.
Not interested to comment on any of the news articles, I just came to ask: “Guess who has two thumbs and got the Wii U before Paul did?”. I did.
@QOTW: Never
Just found out about this podcast and was amused that there was a topic discussed, I just held a speech on in school. Censoring, banning etc. in Germany.
The USK is all right, they just rate the games like any other institue that rates games. The problem is the BPjM (the young protection thing you translated). They decide what gets banned and lands on the index etc. They’re not only after games, but after media in general. They just recently banned Steel Panther’s 1 year old album “Balls Out” for no reason given. Wrote them a mail (respectful, of course) and got no answer whatsoever. So did the German Metal Hammer-magazine. Same answer.
They ban whatever they want to. Sometimes there’s no system behind it. Dishonored came out here completely uncensored, this means I, as Corvo, can decapitate enemies and throw their heads around. Kinda humiliating to the corpse, isn’t it?
If anyone is interested in how cuts on games look like, I recommend http://www.schnittberichte.com
especially the Bulletstorm one.
QOTW: Never.
@QOTW:
Yeah… Nintendo World yes, Nintendo Power NO.
Nintendo World had the “Approved By Nintendo” seal, so, i bought them for a couple of years…