News Nintendo: Wii sales have "stalled"

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/10/30/nintendo-wii-sales-have-stalled/1

Nintendo has admitted that Wii sales have stalled a bit due to lack of strong software support.

 

Not surprising really, its very easy to get bored with the wii. I dont think mine has even been turned on at all this year. No games that excite me available for the wii.

 

i do enjoy shaun white snowboarding but its just too much of a faf to get out

 

I think History has now shown that control gimmicks sell machines, but they certainly don't sell games.

 

^^ Agreed but wheres the next Zelda,Mario,Conker,Goemon,Star Fox, Blast Corps?
Nintendo have/had access to some great games most of which have been lost, but from a marketing point of view bringing back some of them would increase sales significantly imo. Regardless of whether the games are any good

 

On the exact same boat as you. I loved the wii when it first came out but with all these annoying things like wii vollyball, wii fit, wii [insert boring sports name here] it's just not the nintendo I used to love. Infact it's probably grown into something I hate.

 

I use my wii pretty much every week or so when people come over but always play the same games - either mario kart or sports resort.

The appeal of the wii is also it's downfall, there is simply no need to buy that many party games when the select few that are already out are actually already quite good!

Any serious (read: single player) gaming is on the PS3 and as such that's what most of the games I get are for!

 

Nindendo never learnt from the failures of the GameCube.

-Massive gaps between releases, with some games released months later in Europe/US than Japan.
-Rubbish updates to amazing games like Picmin for example (ie. adjust for control scheme and nothing else)
-Online Multiplayer was dead from the word go (ie. no comparison to xbox live)
-3rd party games that interested adults remained firmly on the 360/PS3 other than the odd one.
-New IP is non existant (other than casual sport games)... the world is fed up of Mario et al.. (Well I am !)
-H/W doesnt cater for more advanced games.
-Quality Control.... the shovelware for the Wii is extraordinary. I pity all those people in tesco's buying such rubbish for their kids.

I have a Wii and enjoy it when playing with others... but it doesnt get played much. I just read a review of dead space extraction for the Wii which I might get, but nothing on the horizon has my attention...

Really need a decent game to take advantage of the motion plus controllers (other than Sports Resort)


Oh... and a HD version (Wii - 2) will not capture the magic sales back either. It was a once in a life time opportunity for Nintendo to cash in on the 'casual' market (which they did).... but once saturated, these people simply dont replace their Wii's ! They are appliances ... like toasters !

 

That's half of Nintendo's problem as I see it - They rely too much on their staple franchises to sell consoles.

I don't profess to be any kind of expert on economics, business or marketing and Nintendo may have sold massive volumes of the Wii initially, but I think they bought into a false economy by relying so much on the mainstream/casual market.

Actual 'gamers' tend to be more selective in their game purchases, but they also continue to buy games in the long-term, whereas the majority of the casuals (in my experience) who bought the Wii just bought 1 or 2 games (if any, other than Wii Sports or Wii Fit), then got bored of it and packed it away.
That would be fine if the console itself were profitable, but consoles have historically never been profitable, going as far as to make losses in production much of the time - While the games & licensing act as the real source of profit for companies like Sony, Microsoft & Nintendo.

Dedicated gamers could save the Wii if it had a lineup worth the time and investment from fans, but it simply doesn't - It's a successful gimmick but it has no long-term appeal, as evidenced by the many 'actual gamers' who just got bored of the Wii.

Nintendo tried to market the Wii as being casual-gamer-friendly, while still providing the staple franchise games that their fanbase expects (Zelda, Mario, etc) yet both of those markets find themselves bored of the Wii in short time and moving back to other consoles once the novelty wears off and the launch games run their course.
There's something very wrong with that.

If the Wii dropped out of the market I wouldn't shed any tears - Good riddance to casual, mainstream gaming; it's a blight on the artform.

 

Come the next generation i would love to see the nintendo of the N64 days that i loved, But its more likely to be an even more dumbed down console than the wii.

 

Anyone else hear about the radio competition in america where you win a Wii if you can drink the most water without going to wee, a contestant died of water intoxication as a result and family have just been awarded $16 million compensation.

 

the wii was the only profitable console this generation and they sold millions making profit

 

So I've heard, and obviously it's highly unlikely that the Wii will drop out of the market, that was just a facetious comment on my part.
I find it unlikely that any profit was made on the sales of the console itself though, unless their use of GameCube-era components actually saved them that much in production costs.

I stand by my points though, Nintendo aren't going to recover that momentum with the Wii without a shakeup of some sort.

 

The Wii is extremely cheap to produce, and has been from day one. Under $100 if I remember correctly.

 

360 and ps3 still cost alot to make. Wii has been profit after profit for everyone sold

 

Well stagnation after selling like mad for three years isn't to bad. Brawl is enough to keep me going back, for everything else theres PC *hugs PC*

 

Actually, there's a new game coming soon-ish called (get ready, it's really inventive..) New Super Mario Bros Wii. Basically, from what I've seen, it's a combination of Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros 3 - and it actually looks quite good! It's a 2D side-scroller and there are a few new power-up things like a propeller hat and a penguin costume (ice balls instead of fireballs), and there's co-op with Mario, Luigi and a couple Toads, and hoards of Yoshi's! So that may finally be a game worth getting on the Wii.

Also, there's supposed to be a new Zelda game in the making that's designed specifically for the Wii, whereas Twilight Princess was made for the Gamecube then ported over. Don't know if there'll really be anything groundbreaking with that though, but it's rumoured that it might require Wii Motion Plus - which could mean you actually have to swing the Wii-mote like a sword and have more control of Link. Something I'll probably get as a fan of the series, but I haven't got my hopes up too much.

As for Conker's, that was a Rare title, and Rare were bought by Microsoft ages ago. Hence there was a Bad Fur Day remake on the original X-Box, which was just the same as the N64 for the single player but with updated graphics. The multiplayer in the X-box version, however, was truly awesome imo. The buyout is also why there hasn't been a good Donkey Kong game in a while, and why Banjo-Kazooie has pretty much dropped off the map (there is a B-K game on the X-Box 360, but the series was more at home with the 'family-orientated' Nintendo). It's really a shame that a talented console developer like Rare are tied down to just one system, be it Nintendo or Microsoft.

 

I'd buy the new Zelda, other than that my son (age 5) gets games from time to time. Oh, and I've got all the GHero games,

Nothing for the Wii for ages has made me want to buy it. They should do a good RPG/Puzzler for it.

 

Surely the problem with slowing down sales could also be attributed to saturation of the market. I am not talking total saturation as that would be insane, but most people who would be buying a wii have surely bought one already. Sony got around this by releasing a slimmer version to make people rebuy, and MS got around this by making the consoles break and making people want a nice black or limited edition one.

I think Nintendo need a Wii-i.

 

Waits for F1 2009 on the Wii.... although as I type this my 3yr old son is playing Super Mario Galaxy and I played Anno the other night too so mine does get used.