Nintendo is actually getting better at marketing, just not on TV

[savisn]

Nintendo's advertising strategy is baffling.

Consider this:

In FY2008 - at the height of Wii and DS craziness when both systems were essentially selling themselves Nintendo spent 113 Billion Yen (about $1.1 Billion USD) on advertising (all-in for systems, games, etc)

In FY2012 - with a somewhat struggling 3DS and a LAUNCH of the Wii U they spent only 61 Billion Yen ($600 million).

For comparison sake Microsoft spent an estimated $500 million just on the Kinect launch (http://nypost.com/2010/10/18/microsofts-move/)

I wouldn't expect Nintendo to try to keep up with MS's marketing machine, but you'd think when they are launching a system they might want to step up the spend a bit and certainly not be around 1/2 of what they were at when they were at their peak sales and mind-share wise. Couple that with terrible ads and it's no wonder people at stores still get WiiU and Wii confused.