Run for the hills, it's all coming to an end! Wii sales have dropped! PS3 sales are up! The world is spinning out of control, people. In a recent talk with IndustryGamer, analyst Michael Pachter has said just as much, revealing that the Wii's sales are down 50 percent year-to-year over the last five months and he expects them to continue dropping if Nintendo doesn't start selling a new bundle or cutting the price of their system as its two competitors have done.
"Until the late August PS3 price cut, the Xbox 360 appealed to consumers, likely due to a higher perceived value proposition (the Xbox 360 'core' model was priced $100 lower than the PS3). With the core PS3 and Xbox 360 models priced only $50 higher than the Wii, we expect year-over-year sales of Wii hardware to continue their annual declines until the company either changes its bundle or lowers price. Wii unit sales are 50% below last year’s level over the last five months, and we think that September sales will repeat the pattern," Pachter said.
What should be noted is that "below last year's level" for the month of August is still 277,000 units sold in the US alone (more than the 360 or the PS3). That's not bad at all. In fact, it's good. See, half of a bajillion kazillion is still a bajillion, and when Nintendo turns a profit on every system it sells I just don't see them desperately clawing for extra market space just because their competitors are seeing an increase in sales. While a Wii price drop is sure to be coming at some point in the future I don't think it will be because Nintendo came in first place yet again.
Matthew Razak is Destructoid's Associate editor and co-founder of film site
Flixist. He began as community member "cowzilla" and was since sequestered to write brainy features material. He lives in Los Angeles with his beautiful wife.
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Contest:
6:00 PM on 09.12.2009
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Thank god destructoid doesn't over react to this stuff.
That's my ghostbusters joke for the day, I'll move along now.
I enjoy my Wii for Wii Fit, EA Sports Active, Resident Evil: Lightgun Chronicles, and some of the Virtual Console stuff, but I can see the limited shelf life of it for the average user.
Then again, it is nearly three years into the life of the console, so the tech might be cheap enough that they can lower the price and still turn a profit on them.
Well, looks like consumers are finally coming around to the TRUTH about Nintendo's paper thin game console! Now all these poor unssupecting Wii Gamers are coming over to the winning TEAM! With all the good core titles and a system with real horse power! Good luck selling your snake oil now NinLAME-do!
How was that? Did I do it right?
Nintendo's Blue Ocean business strategy makes them immune to pressure from Sony and MS, at least until Natal and the Wand come out (maybe). So I don't think they're sweating over the PS3 selling more.
Yeah, I'm not expecting Red Steel 2 or Call of Duty 4 Reflex Wii to sell well at all.
Watch Shattered Memories and Cursed Mountain bomb.
Wii, the 3rd party graveyard. I've already bought like 6 games this year.
I've bought over 12 games just for my PS3 this year. How many games has the average Wii owner bought?
yay or nay?
And there's also the fact that households are saturated with the system. No matter how hard you wish, once everyone has Product X, you can't push additional units. Unless they fail, of course, but who would want to sabotage their own hardware? =P
price cuts and new products translate to higher sales.
EXACTLY! Now Nintendo needs to stop with the hardware bullshit and start putting out AAA software. With the new Metroid they can really get some momentum going with a couple good reveals next year that slowly trickle onto the shelves throughout 2010-2011.
Surely the sales of the wii going down makes more sense, since more people already own them, so less people would be buying them?
Fuck I don't know sales mean nothing to me. :<
Just laying there next to my PS2 crying about how much I use my PS3.
Time to drop system price by at least fifty bones and show off that new Zelda, N.
Nintendo has and always will continue focus on the "actual gamer" crowd. Why? Well it's because the majority of Nintendo's franchises are for the core gamer. It's their bread and butter. Nintendo's simply doing a balancing act of making games for its fans as well as games for the expanded audience just like how it has been doing so on the DS.
I guess Sin & Punishment 2, Mario Galaxy 2, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Metroid: Other M, Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, Zelda: Spirit Tracks aren't core games, huh ?
People need to think before they say something stupid.
This isn't about competition for Nintendo, it's about survival. Part of their strategy is to maintain the public's perception of the value of their hardware and software for as long as possible. To cut their prices would mean the value of their hardware and software would be diminished. That's why Wii and DS games haven't seen any price cuts or "Platinum/Million-Seller editions". They worry about if the value declines, then the interest in their hardware and software declines, and this is what they are competing against.
As for Sony and Microsoft, it's obvious that the value of their hardware has greatly diminished from their inception. The PS3 was 500-600 dollars at launch. If the system's value was worth that price range, then there would have been no need to cut the price, because the system wouldn't be selling so (comparatively) poorly. With each price cut and SKU, the value of the system diminishes. And because Microsoft and Sony aren't catering to the Expanded Market (yet, though I doubt they'll do a very good job of it when they do), they're competing over us (core gamers), which means they are more than likely going back and forth cannibalizing each other's sales.
Eventually they would've got bored of it.
At least my DS is still rockin it.
But the slowdown isn't from the recession, or because they abandoned us "core gamers" (they're catering to both markets now), but because they haven't put any good games lately. The Atari 2600 sold during a recession, and Nintendo isn't blaming the recession for their poor sales, and have gone out of their way to adjust their projections accordingly.
"Uh, No More Heroes is GrassHopper Manufacture's best selling game. On top of that, it sold well enough to spawn a sequel."
NMH has sold only 100,000 in the 1.5 years it's been out on the highest selling console this gen. 100,000 is really low in sales.
Hell Suda 51 wants NMH to appear on other platforms after NMH 2. Can't blame him.
Nintendo have officially sold out by going after a big but difficult market on which they won't have the same grasp next time while abandoning it's core market, you know, GAMERS.
My parents that have a Wii for when the neices and nephews come round are not gamers, yet they helped Nintendo's sales figures and they certainly wouldn't buy a WiiHD or a SuperWii or whatever, and due to the lack of "proper2 games on the Wii, i wouldn't either.
I will be borrowing MY wii back from them when Monster Hunter Comes out though, just for that one game - My name is Sexualchocolate and I have a problem with Monster Hunter.
It says that the competition is after a completely different market, a far more specific market and a far more constrained demographic.
Granny doesn't want a PS3 but the ladies at the home said Wii bowling was fun...
Not to diss the Wii, I'm all for a bit of sillyness, but they're not aimed at gamers in the slightest, would even go as far as calling the wii a "console-like-toy" rather than a games console.