Iwata: It is untrue that there is little benefit for third-parties on Wii

February 8th, 2010 Posted in News, Posted by Valay, Wii

This information comes from the Q&A portion of Nintendo’s latest financial briefing…

“In recent video game software market, there is a huge gap between what sells very well and what sells very badly and this is a challenge for the whole industry. Some people criticize that Wii business has been driven only by Nintendo’s great hits and there is little benefit for third parties, which in fact is not true, as the situation is similar even on non-Nintendo platforms, when we compare per-title sales figure like this. Adding to these facts, when we actually consider which platform owns more major titles of third parties, that criticism again loses the basis. But once people assume a fact they can hardly pay attention to the contrary bases. So I believe we need to ask foreign software companies for their cooperation by asking them to pay close attention to these facts and by explaining the business opportunities on our platforms, in order to build a cooperative relationship. I must admit we did not make enough effort to solve the bias or misunderstanding between third parties and us. I believe we have to make effort to make them understand that we can build a win-win relationship on Nintendo platforms with their good software titles that hold plenty of opportunities.” – Satoru Iwata

The situation with third-party sales on Wii is tricky. Some titles do quite well, but on other hand, there are a number of high-quality products that really should see better sales. It’s also interesting to consider that some Nintendo-published games have disappointing sales, like Excitebots: Trick Racing. Something tells me that Disaster: Day of Crisis performed poorly in Europe, too.

Thanks to Nathan P for the news tip!

Source


  1. 4 Responses to “Iwata: It is untrue that there is little benefit for third-parties on Wii”

  2. By thomas on Feb 9, 2010

    “I must admit we did not make enough effort to solve the bias or misunderstanding between third parties and us.”

    It’s great to see him admit this… but you just know he concluded the same thing about the N64. And I still remember the interview where he pointed out they should’ve tried harder with the GameCube. So why exactly is this a problem *again*?

    I’ve got enough titles to play on my Wii but I’ll admit it’s bothering me that A) 3rd party support is lacking again and B) the titles that deserve to sell really well (I’m looking at you Little King’s Story), just don’t. I don’t feel as bad for Nintendo titles selling poorly because they still make buckets of money and chose not to advertise the titles; I just hope they’re going to continue bringing out new IP’s despite of this.

  3. By Captain N on Feb 9, 2010

    Ok now for some time now all you ever hear is 3rd party games don’t sell well on Nintendo home platforms…. and this became Nintendos problem how? Nintendo may have produced the home console but they are still in competition with every 3rd party to sell games. Why does Nintendo have to teach others how to sell games on their systems? Imagine this…. Nintendo makes a football game and it outsells Madden on Wii, now 3 years later Nintendo football is still killing Madden… EA would say:Madden doesn’t sell well on Wii because everyone buys Nintendo made games. Now why on earth should Nintendo teach them how to sell Madden better… by doing that they would hurt their own football games sales. So just because their games sell better in other genres, they should not have to help the other companies. 3rd parties need to ask their fans how to sell better and what exactly they are looking for, and what would make them want to buy their games. Don’t blame Nintendo !!!!

  4. By thomas on Feb 9, 2010

    Your argument would only be valid if Nintendo made enough (both quantity, quality and variety) games for:

    A) people with a Wii to be satisfied with the offering of games
    B) a new audience (be it mainstream or hardcore) to want to buy the Wii

    I’ve heard plenty of people complain about a lack of quality titles on the Wii. So yes, it is a problem for Nintendo if they want to keep their consumers – espcially if you take into account that the mainstream attention they’ve got going on can be very fleeting (all the more with Sony and Microsoft bringing out motion controls as well).

  5. By Captain N on Feb 9, 2010

    Nintendo will exist with or without hardcore gamers, as these games sell no where near casual games as well as kids games. If Nintendo made a system and they were the only people making games for it, it would still sell, lets be real for a minute. Nintendo needs no one to make a profit, it just helps to have a bigger selection of games from others. Games like Wii sports/resorts and Wii Fit/plus show that casual games sell rediculous amounts and if anything those are the core games since they sell the most. And things like Nsmb Wii show classic gaming will never die and shows that they can destroy hardcore game sales from the likes of MW2, GTA or Halo any day !!!

Post a Comment