Satoru Iwata seems to be very confident in his company's latest console, and he's very confident that it will sell well. At least at first anyway. The CEO points to pre-orders as the proof.
"If you look at how pre-orders are doing at the moment, it is not an exaggeration to say that Wii U is sure to sell well in this holiday season, as many of you are probably thinking," he said to investors last week. He did identify one of Nintendo's main weaknesses–great games at launch or near launch (often the first party titles so many gamers buy Nintendo products for) and then taper off as weaker third party titles take over. He believes it's not going to happen this time, and that they will help sustain the Wii U's selling power.
"Nintendo tends to release too many titles at the launch of a hardware system and as a result suffers a drop in new games for quite some time after launch, and for the Wii U launch, we are being very careful not to let it happen," he explained. "Fortunately, third-party publishers overseas are launching many titles for us this time, and we were able to push back the release of some of the titles that we had originally intended to release as launch titles until next year.”
It's true too. For the first time in a long time, Nintendo is releasing their console with not only titles aimed at mature audiences, but with strong third party titles like Assassin's Creed III and Mass Effect 3, as well as fan favorites like Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Darksiders II. Iwata hinted at being able to push their own titles back–this could mean there will be some of Nintendo's famously strong first party titles in 2013 to keep momentum for the console going.
But Nintendo expects to sell around 5.5 million consoles by the end of their fiscal year on March 31st, 2013, a figure that some industry analysts think is "disappointing and unrealistic."
Do you think the Wii U will do as well as Iwata hopes?
