Iwata discusses Wii U’s poor momentum
The Wii U has not been able to maintain any momentum. This is most apparent in the marketplace, where the console has struggled to sell worldwide.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata discussed the Wii U’s lack of momentum during the company’s investors meeting earlier today. Iwata pointed to a few key issues like extended development of important first-party titles, consumer confusion, and slow release pace of games.
Iwata’s comments in full:
Regarding Wii U, the release intervals of first-party key titles have been so much longer than we expected at the Corporate Management Policy Briefing in January that we have not successfully maintained the momentum of the platform. In addition, we have not been able to solidly communicate the product value of Wii U to our consumers yet, which has been a grand challenge for us.
Some have the misunderstanding that Wii U is just Wii with a pad for games, and others even consider Wii U GamePad as a peripheral device connectable to Wii. We feel deeply responsible for not having tried hard enough to have consumers understand the product.
Wii U might still have no such captivating game title as “Wii Sports” for Wii, with which people immediately comprehended its product value, but it surely has a lot of factors appreciated by users. We would like to take time to work thoroughly for its penetration, by making various efforts to have many people understand its product value as well as enriching the software lineup.
Wii U has lost momentum due to the release pace of first-party titles which has not lived up to consumers’ expectations. Starting with “Pikmin 3” scheduled for release in the upcoming July, however, we will intensively launch our key titles to give sales momentum to the platform.
As a decisive factor in buying a console is that you cannot play a much-anticipated title without the hardware, we will do our best to have you feel from this summer to the end of this year that there are plenty of great games for Wii U.
We have many titles whose release dates are yet to be announced. At E3, we will disclose more specific information about the titles for the rest of this year and early next year.
