Latest Wii, Nintendo DS, Game Boy, and GameCube news, screenshots, and game previews

Following Nintendo’s revision to its profit forecast, a move which some analysts are calling “too cautious“, Nintendo’s shares have since dropped by 12 per cent — the largest fall Nintendo has seen in 18 years. Company president Satoru Iwata yesterday attempted to address many concerns that the business may have peaked:

“I think it is true that new information penetrates through the Japanese market very quickly and that Japanese people tend to get tired of something new very quickly,” Iwata stated. “It is also true that the population is smaller when compared with that of other major markets, so it is inevitable that the market starts to feel saturated earlier than others.”

Citing previous hardware generations, he noted that the U.S. has twice the sales potential of Japan. Europe, where Nintendo’s marketing has improved since the GameCube days, also presents growth opportunities.

Iwata also mentioned that the Nintendo DSi was one method Nintendo used to “reactivate the Japanese DS market”. Regarding the Wii, he stated that it’s “not impossible for the Wii’s total sales to exceed the final installed base of PS2“.

Tags: Nintendo DS, Nintendo DSi, Recession, Sales, Satoru Iwata, Wii

Japanese analyst Hiroshi Kamide speculates that the Wii craze might be coming to an end, as Nintendo today cut its income forecasts by 33 per cent.

Although Nintendo still expects to finish the year in the black, “analysts described Nintendo’s guidance as a ‘baffling and potentially very worrying‘ sign for worldwide sales of the Wii as recession curtails household spending around the world”.

Part of the problem, according to games industry insiders in Japan and the UK, is that the pipeline of “must-have” Nintendo Wii software is less strong now than it was six months ago.

On the most widely read gaming websites, there are few forthcoming Wii titles generating the sort of excitement that preceded the release of Mario Galaxy or Smash Brothers.

One big source of margin destruction has been the soaring yen, which rose 24 per cent against the dollar and 30 per cent against the euro in 2008.

Tags: Recession, Sales, Wii

Hardware sales for all consoles are falling in Japan and the Wii is dropping closer to the PlayStation 3.

Considering its price-point, Sony’s PS3 appears to have made the best impression. Though it continues to double the weekly turnover of the Xbox 360, Sony may be more interested in the fact that the console is now just 12,000 sales behind the Wii; the closest it has been to the home console market leader in months.

Nintendo, however, may be anxious about sales of the Wii, which have fallen disproportionately against the overall hardware decline. Two weeks ago Media Create reported it had sold close to 90,000 units more than its current rate.

Will the Wii bounce back?

Tags: Japan, Media Create, PlayStation 3, Sales, Wii, Xbox 360

Cowen analyst Doug Creutz has some new rough estimates based on Nintendo’s success and Sony’s struggle during last year’s holiday season:

• Sony will sell about 4 million PS3s in 2009, down from previous projections of 6.25 million units sold. Fewer PS3 sales in 2010 too, now projecting 4.5 million units sold vs 6.5 million previously.
• Wii picks up the slack: 8 million consoles to be sold in 2009 vs 6 million previous. More in 2010 too: 6 million vs old estimates of 4 million.
• Little change to Microsoft’s Xbox 360: Estimates fairly steady, Doug sees 4.25 million this year, and another 4 million in 2010.

The interesting thing is Doug sees total console sales fairly flat — it’s just Nintendo is grabbing more customers that otherwise would have been Sony’s.

Is Sony sure they aren’t in competition with Nintendo?

Tags: PlayStation 3, PS3, Sales, Sony, Wii

VentureBeat has a great article which compares the sales of the Wii and PlayStation 3 to the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube, respectively.

• “In just over two years, the Wii outsold the PS2’s comparable initial sales by 10 percent, according to the NPD. That is, in the first 26 months of the Wii, Nintendo sold 17.5 million Wiis while Sony sold 15.9 million PS2s in the U.S. in the first 26 months of sales.
• By comparison, the PlayStation 3 sold 6.79 million units in the U.S. during the same initial 26-month period, compared to 6.75 million GameCubes, which finished a distant third last generation and forced Nintendo to rethink how it sold video games.
• Microsoft, for its part, sold 9.2 million Xbox 360s in the U.S. in its first 26 months, trailing Nintendo in a faraway second by a margin of 2 to 1 — the same position the company held last generation.”

That is, in the first 26 months of the Wii, Nintendo sold 17.5 million Wiis while Sony sold 15.9 million PS2s in the U.S. in the first 26 months of sales. If the sales pattern holds, we expect Nintendo to sell 55 million Wiis in America by 2014 and 154 million units worldwide.

Tags: GameCube, Microsoft, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PS2, PS3, Sales, Sony, Wii, Xbox 360

Nintendo had plenty of time to increase production of its increasingly popular Wii console but was sill unable fully to meet demand during the holidays. According to Game Daily, several analysts expected sales to be higher. Although the Wii sold exceptionally well — above 2 million units in December alone — it could have “doubled that figure if supply had been better”.

Deutsche Bank analyst Jeetil Patel agreed that supply was a problem in the final month of 2008. “While the data suggest the Wii lagged a bit in December, we think there is still strong consumer demand for the console, suggesting supply constraints in the channel for the console in December,” he said.

“We still believe that Nintendo, with its Wii and DS install base, were the main catalysts behind protecting our industry from seeing the full wrath of the recession in late 2008.”

Let’s hope 2009 will be an even bigger year for Nintendo!

Tags: Recession, Sales, Wii