Iwata: Price cut not why 3DS selling better than DS, will do the “utmost” to avoid Wii U price drop
It’s no secret that the 3DS had a rough start at retail. The system’s poor sales led to one of the fastest price drops we’ve seen for a Nintendo system in the company’s history.
That being said, president Satoru Iwata believes the 3DS’ newfound success and ability to outsell the DS isn’t a result of the $80 cut. After all, the 3DS still costs more than the DS did at launch.
This is just one element Iwata touched on in a meeting with investors at E3 2012 last week (and published today). He also talked about 3DS launch mistakes and how Nintendo will be “doing our utmost to avoid a situation where we have to cut the price of the Wii U hardware shortly after its launch”.
One point I’d like to make is that in the sales comparison of the Nintendo DS and the Nintendo 3DS, the price of the Nintendo 3DS hardware ($169.99) after the markdown is still higher than the original price of the Nintendo DS ($149.99) at the launch in the U.S. So, I don’t think that the price cut is the reason that the hardware is selling better than the Nintendo DS.
Next I’d like to talk about what we have learned from our experience with the Nintendo 3DS. I think the largest challenge we had with the Nintendo 3DS initially at its launch time, which goes beyond the price, was the number and timing of appealing software titles (which motivated consumers to purchase the hardware) we were able to provide at an early stage after the launch to drive the hardware sales. Because the value of the Nintendo 3DS hardware did not match consumers’ expectations at the initial price and the sales pace slowed down, we took the measure of reducing the price to help revitalize the hardware sales.
For the launch of the Wii U, we are putting a strong focus on how we can avoid a similar situation. As you can see from our software lineup at E3, we have a number of titles which will help drive the hardware sales. While some titles were able to showcase their unique appeals to the audience, people do not yet fully understand the appeal of some of the other titles. Between now and the launch, we’ll continue to work to make sure that people clearly understand the appealing elements of that software. So what I can say here today is that we’re doing our utmost to avoid a situation where we have to cut the price of the Wii U hardware shortly after its launch, as we had to do for the Nintendo 3DS. We are going to ensure that consumers will consider the Wii U price reasonable for what they are able to do with the system and will not expect a price drop very early in its life cycle.
