One Game to Change Wii U

[Demon_Skeith]

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata believes the introduction of one game could dramatically improve the Wii U's sales situation.

Iwata talked with investors last week after announcing another operating loss ($457 million USD) for the Japanese game company, with a large part of Nintendo's underperformance stemming from poor sales of Wii U. Nintendo only sold 2.7 million Wii U consoles last year and is predicting a so-called conservative sales estimate of 3.6 million units for the current fiscal year. The low forecast brought forth a question about the console's future from an investor, wondering if Nintendo could actually achieve yearly sales of 5 million units or even 10 million in the future.

"As for Wii U, we estimated 9 million units of hardware in sales in the last fiscal year, but many of you must be aware of the actual results, and the Wii U market has experienced a sharp downturn," Iwata said. "In order to recreate momentum and sell 5 million or 10 million units of hardware annually, there are indeed challenges that we must overcome."

With Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U on the horizon, Nintendo hopes to spur sales of the Wii U and create momentum, but Iwata wanted to stay realistic and provide conservative forecasts for the home console. Still, he believes a single game could save the Wii U, pointing out how Pokemon sparked the Game Boy handheld system in its latter years.

"The fate of a video game system is often influenced greatly by the introduction of a single title," Iwata said. "As many of you probably remember, before the release of the Pokemon game, Game Boy had been showing slow growth, and many people wondered whether it was the end of Game Boy. But the Pokemon game singlehandedly changed the landscape of the system, which then started to show the strongest sales in the lifecycle of the system."

As such, Iwata doesn't think Wii U has hit its sales peak, and he wants to work hard to ensure there's growth with the console over the next couple of years. The Nintendo president also wants to make sure Wii U owners are satisfied before releasing another console, even though the company has already been working on its next iteration of hardware.

source

*shakes head.* Nintendo doesn't get it.

 

[Marc]

Eh... MK8 and SSB are the only reasons why I decided to get a Wii U and no, I'm not satisfied. They need more RPGs >.

 

[VirusZero]

The chance that one game could save the system is pretty low.

It'd have to be something simple, elegant and entirely new. 

I mean Pokemon sparked the Gameboy because it was brand new, no one had seen anything like it before. It was easy to get into but provided a ton of depth. 

But this Nintendo seems content to just pump out new iterations of existing franchises, re-release others and idle along. They seem to have forgotten why people would want to buy a console. It's not because the system is powerful, it's because of the games. The quantity and quality of games. I mean if you only have 2-4 great games on the system then why buy it when the competition has that many now and have just gotten started?

(I mean even the Xbox has some solid games with Dead Rising 3 and Titanfall plus the multi-platforms. And Sony has Killzone: Shadowfall and Infamous: Second Son along with the multi-plats.)

 

[froggyboy604]

I think if Nintendo lowers the price to $99-199 for the Wii U 32GB version, they would sell more consoles from people who plan to play 1-5+ games for the Wii U. Over time there would be even more games for the Wii U, and there are already a lot of fun Wii and Wii U games which the Wii U can play.

I read the Wii U is outselling the PS4 in Japan, so I think if Nintendo lowers the price of the Wii U, and games, promotes their Wii U, and it games more, they can sell better in other countries as well.