Nintendo: The market is now waiting for new consoles
Points out how sales of current-gen consoles are on a constant decline.
Nintendo boss Saturo Iwata believes that people are ready to consume new consoles.
Speaking to investors in the company’s third quarter financial briefing, in order to prove his point, Iwata used the declining sales of home consoles in December 2011 as an example, with the company’s current platform the Wii peaking at about 95 million of sales worldwide.
“I think that the market is now waiting for a new proposal for home consoles,” Iwata said.
“Along with effects from our trade marketing activities in December which mainly focused on the Nintendo 3DS, we were not able to sell the Wii as well as we usually do,” he added, referring to the US market. “However, not just the Wii, but the overall performance of home consoles in December was lower than the previous year.
“Usually, the Wii enjoys high sales in December, but last year, even though The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was highly acclaimed, we were not able to expand it sufficiently to our target audience, and although the Wii was the platform which sold the most software in December, we were not able to propose new Nintendo titles to our broad audience.
“In Europe,” Iwata continued, “it resulted that out of the home consoles, the Wii sold the most in December; however, we can see that the beginning of the year-end sales was slower and the peak was lower compared to that of the previous year.”
Nintendo’s first ever HD console, the Wii U, is expected to launch later this year. As for Sony and Microsoft, both giants have yet to discuss plans for the next wave of consoles, although strong rumors have been hinting lately that the software giant is likely to showcase its Xbox 360 successor at E3 2012.
