Iwata admits Wii Music was a miss.

Well atleast Wii owners are smart enough to know the difference between a casual game and a crappy game. Wii Music was released alongside Animal Crossing: City Folk last year in an attempt to get the Japanese Wii market back into playing form. However, both titles did very little to help make this happen, and it seems that Nintendo's Japanese President, Satoru Iwata, has officially acknowledged this.

I agree that Wii Music, as of now, has not achieved its true potential.

On the other hand, I feel that Wii Music is a software that elicits largely two extremely different reaction from consumers. There are people who highly appreciate it and those who do not appreciate it at all.

Iwata then commented on Brain Training for the DS, which while it suffered from low sales in the short term, it managed to become one of the best selling to date on the system.

We do not like to think that we failed with Wii Music nor that we should abandon sales support. If we had approached Brain Training with that mentality, the software would have not achieved the current sales situation.

At the end of last year, Nintendo launched two Wii titles, Animal Crossing and Wii Music, in hopes that the Japanese consumers would appreciate them and revitalize the Wii market in Japan. Our efforts have not lived up to our expectation. While Wii had very strong momentum in the overseas markets, the Wii market in Japan (during the year-end sales season) showed a slow start, did not show sharp trajectory in sales, and ended up moving back to the sales level of non-sales-season level quickly.

I shudder at the thought of what if Nintendo DS had not had Brain Training or Nintendogs, and if Wii had not had Wii Sports and Wii Fit. For each of these products, we create them hoping for a winner, but it is impossible to hit a bulls eye every time.

Maybe this is the wake-up call we have been waiting for. Although I seriously doubt that Wii Music sales will pick up anytime soon, unless the price drops significantly. If you want, you can check out the official FC review of Wii Music here. Yeah I'm aware it's shameless self promotion, so what?

Source: News: Iwata: Wii Music has underperformed - ComputerAndVideoGames.com