thx1139 said:
In 2010 Nintendo added a 2nd game to the standard packaging. Still month after month the Wii was down YoY compared to 2009. It took special deals every week (besides 1) for the Wii to only end up like 10% down YoY in NA for the Holidays. In NA I think it is safe to say that the average price paid for a Wii during the holiday weeks in NA was less than $180. So in 2011 why down 20%. Well first off why the OP thinks that Wii will do better in the 1st qtr this year compared to last is beyond me. 1 - January 2010 Wii did over 1.6M, October 2009 Wii did 1.5M. The reason I mention that is January usually performs similiar to the previous October. October 2010 Wii did 721K. There is no NSMBWii to help boost hardware sales in January 2011. The price cut wont come 1st qtr. Then add in competition is more intense then ever for the Wii. 2 - No longer is Wii the only Motion based system on the market. Any price cut Nintendo does will also correspond with price cuts by Microsoft and Sony. The press and public are talking about Kinect, and the press has written articles about how the Wii is now passe. All of this points to the Wii selling less and the 360 and PS3 selling more. 3 - Finally with 85 million consoles sold no longer will a software title make any measureable difference to the hardware sales. Not to mention Vitality Sensor is probably something that has simply been put aside and what it does can be done with Kinect. How do I mean? Well Kinect can sense how fast you are moving about and can estimate how much effort you would be putting in. Already titles on Kinect estimate your physical exertion without a device clipped to my finger. |
1 - That's more or less a coincidence, I would say. I doubt you can find much of a reason for January replicating October. I don't see how demand would be similar. On top of that, October was a month which was the first to be entirely affected by the price cut so its sales were inflated. Therefore, January would have been significantly larger than October otherwise. Also, even though the deals are all over now, Wii is still only slightly down YOY (except for Japan, which won't contribute much later on).
2 - Being the only motion system did not make much of a difference during the holidays and most likely won't in 2011. Also, if Wii does end up in the dire situation that you expect, keep in mind that Nintendo has the ability to cut down far more than Sony and Microsoft. A $99 Wii (easily possible whilst remaining profitable) could easily triumph over a $119 360 and $179 PS3 (breaking even on 360, losing heavily on PS3). Also, the press, video game journalists and general press journalists alike, have spoken critically of Wii since its release. That is no new factor and will not affect Wii sales.
3 - Individual software won't make a difference (save for titles in Japan like DQX, and, actually, popular genres such as JRPGs which aren't represented well on Wii could still bring in new audiences), but what put the Wii on its path of destruction in the past two years was the lack of software support throughout the year. Just having a couple of titles released here and there will give people a reason to buy a Wii during the summer which hasn't been present. Also, VS's specific uses are still unknown so we can't say much on that (I doubt Kinect can sense your pulse when you're standing still, though, and, if it can, I'm impressed).
“These are my principles; if you don’t like them, I have others.” – Groucho Marx
