Wall Street Journal: Nintendo starts to cool down

[famousringo]

Ail said:

famousringo said:

Well, he did do a good job of covering every little chink in the Wii's armor, even if he utterly failed to see the larger picture.

For example, 5 out of the top 10 selling Japanese console games of 2009 are Wii titles, compared to 6 out of 10 in 2008. Not exactly the software collapse it's made out to be.

And explosive US sales are certainly a big factor in why Nintendo is getting a smaller share of its revenue from Japan. A more actually useful comparison would be revenue from Nintendo products versus revenue from Playstation products in Japan.

 

It probably would be more usefull to know how many units those 5 games in the top 10 have sold lol, being first among the last doesn't mean much...

The Wii had several million sellers in 2008, I don't think any of those 5 games you mention in 2009 are anywhere near that mark....( Q1 2008 had SSBB, Q2 2008 had Mario Kart). Now we can sure hope there are better released lined up for the rest of the year but they are going to have a tough job doing anywhere near what those 2 games did ( Wii Fit sold an ass load of copies in Japan in 2008 too).

Remember this is the Wall Street journal, they are trying to guess how Nintendo stock will fare based on the potential growth of the company within the next 2-5 years. This ain't the newspaper you pick up at the corner of the street...

 

All the more reason they should look at the big picture, rather than picking at details and using misleading metrics. Japan is the only market the Wii looks weak in, and it's the market with the weakest growth in video gaming.

The Wii's weakness in Japan is almost entirely due to a lack of releases. Of the five I mention, Mario Tennis is the only 2009 release, while 4/5 non-Wii titles in the top ten are 2009 releases. Given how software-dependant the Japanese market appears to be, the article is neglects to notice that major Japanese third party franchises like Tales, Monster Hunter, and Dragon Quest are now shifting to the Wii, bolstering Nintendo's highly successful first party offerings.