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Satoru Iwata, Nintendo President and CEO, has commented during the recent Financial Results Briefingthat the company has not seen Wii sales “seriously affected” by Microsoft’s Kinect, due to a lack of “hit titles” for the controller-free motion device.

“I think the image of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is largely different between Japanese citizens and U.S. citizens,” Iwata begun, in response to a query from an investor as to whether Kinect was having any impact on Nintendo. “I think I can say that the Xbox 360 business has been in a good condition since last summer.”

He continues, “On the other hand, when we talk about whether Kinect contributed to significantly expanding the number of Xbox users, as I have previously shown you the data on the graph, the number of Wii users has grown to about 10 million, but the growth in the number of Microsoft users is much smaller. Therefore, we feel that it would be rather unusual if Nintendo’s Wii market was taken over by the launch of Kinect, or if the users who were playing with Wii quit playing with it and started to play with other consoles.”

Iwata was quick to recognise that it is common that many players across both North America and Europe own multiple console systems, although cited the lack of “hit titles” for Kinect leading to its lacklustre impact.

“Of course, many users in the U.S. have multiple consoles at their homes,” Iwata commented. “Many Wii users also have Xbox 360 and vice versa, so I am not saying that there is completely no effect in terms of use rate. However, hit titles are not being released continually every month for Kinect software, so we don’t believe Wii sales are being seriously affected.”

http://www.nintendo-universe.co.uk/2011/05/02/iwata-wii-sales-not-seriously-affected-by-microsofts-kinect-device/

Wii sales were already on a decline before Kinect. Then even during the busiest months of the last year. The Wii still outsold the the 360. So ya at that time I would have to agree with him. Looking at this year Nintendo hasn't provided any great software to push the Wii.  Despite the success of Kinect there is maybe one killer app, but that game is still out sold. By exclusive game on the Wii released at the same time Just Dance over Dance Central. Putting all those bits of information together you can see where the majority of Kinect buyers could be past 360 owners. Meaning Kinect has not taken new video game console buyers from the Wii.

hmmm i pretty much agree

Nintendo has already pulled the rug out from the Wii.  The lack of horsepower in the Wii, the lack of 3rd party games, and now the lack of 1st party games, and difficult YOY comparison is why Wii is so down.  Amazingly, the Wii isn't that far below the 360-- so it is not like it is dead.  Also, the 2 year old Wii Fit has already outsold Kinect for several weeks and Kinect has only been out for a few months.

If Wii could just have a few more decent games it would probably be at least even with the PS3 right now.

There is truth. If we look at sales during and after Kinect launch in the various regions, we see that Kinect mainly hit Balance Board sales, particularly in USA. Quite obviously some hits on BB sales may have had side-effects on Wii sales, but during Xmas, when Ninty supported them with some games, some classic editions and many excellent bundles, Wii sales were good and it outsold competition as usual, after Xmas Ninty started resting on its oars for what concerns Wii, and sales took a greater hit then, when Kinect sales too were lower, than when the latter's sales were at their top. After Xmas we saw that almost always Kinect outsold Balance Board in USA and sometimes WW even when Wii managed to outsold XB360 WW, and that Wii managed to have better weeks in USA, where BB was badly hit at the same time, than in EMEAA, where BB was still stronger than Kinect even during the heavy Easter adverting campaign Kinect just got here in EU, so it's quite easy to see what Nintendo product was hit the most by Kinect and where.

So he is happy because kinect in few months didn't outsell whole year Wii numbers?

Reminds me of Playstation family in NPD pr ;)