Nintendo's income has fallen 58.6% since spring of this year. This is the first drop in company profits in four years. Nintendo
Wii sales took a huge hit, falling 43% from last year to 5.75 million units. Nintendo has to lowered its Nintendo
Wii sales forecast for the full year from 26 million units to 20 million units.
Iwata, speaking at a press conference in Osaka today, said "[The]
Wii has stalled. We were unable to continually release strong software, and let the nice mood cool." Iwata later added, "We were unable to show a new game to become 'the next thing.' In the game market, once you've lost the momentum, it takes time to recover."
Iwata seems to have a positive outlook for the Nintendo
Wii, however. According to a report from the press conference, Iwata said of the decision to lower the Nintendo
Wii's sales targets, "With the price drop, sales returned to a certain level, but they just did not reach the level of last year around this time. We decided that it would be difficult to sell enough to recover from the poor performance of the first half of the year." On the new 20 million target, he said, "In order to reach it, we'll have to move quite a large quantity, but it's a figure we released after having felt the momentum returning [based off the price drop]."
Iwata Says Wii Price Drop Effective (andriasang.com blog, 10.29.2009)
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