Hey Im certain that ill be buying some Nintendo shares in the next few weeks, that indicates a level of confidence surely.

I would be guessing Nintendo are going roll out surprise games, colours and maybe a new bundle in japan at E3.

No discount but we'll see if its enough.

Monster Hunter 3 should keep it alive in Japan for a while.

Monster HUnter'll give Wii a bigger jump than the motion+ I guess, but yes the Wii Music / AC combo was a bad choice for Holiday season.

Gamerace, i think you quite possibly correct but i'm not yet convinced that it is too late, but we are on the cusp. Looking at Japan in isolation we can see that it is becoming a relatively small market ,but it is it's potential to affect other markets that interests me. If none of the home consoles take off in Japan, by which i mean pick up and maintain sales significantly above current levels. then Japan will simply fail to have any significant impact on this generation in sales or developer support.

Sure Nintendo would love to make more money from the Wii in their homeland but I actually think Nintendo has less to lose than Sony here. The Wii has proven itself in Western markets and i think failure to gain significant sales momentum in Japan is not going to adversely affects it's success in the West where it's fate is largely sealed. If on the other hand Sony managed to gain some momentum in Japan i could see Sony, particularly if they maintain their long term plan, leverage it's way to better sales and acceptance in the West off the back of their success in Japan.

In the end i feel failure of the Wii to make a resurgence in Japan would be of little significance if the PS3 failed to capitalise on this weakness.

I haven't played either one of those two games, but if WiiMusic and AC were really that shallow, it is unfortunate that they were Nintendo's choice of Holiday games.  Had they been otherwise, who knows how they would've fared?  Either way, I AM interested in seeing what Nintendo will do for its next wave of software.

That's what I've been saying. WM+ is being launched with 1 part of the audience in mind only. The casual buyers mostly. I mean, why would someone that isn't into sports or didn't buy the first Wii Sports be glad to find out that the next peripheral that enhances the Wii's capabilities is being launched alongside a casual game? There's pretty much no other choice, its WSR or WSR, otherwise the peripheral is useless. Adding that Nintendo doesn't have a history of supporting it's own perpiherals, it's like release them and start working on the next, why would Nintendo core fans or core gamers buy the thing?

Why are they so short sighted, believing that this new, mostly unknown audience will be their salvation? Look at the numbers people, Wii Music wasn't even bought there, half of the shipment is still sitting at shelves. Wii HW numbers are close to 10k, new SW doesn't even sell anymore. Nintendo shifted focus to a new audience, while ignoring the consequences. They should have focused on both ways, and also should have tried to secure some third party support.

Releasing a game right now for the Wii is like suicide, the popularity has sinked and most of the Wii owners aren't interested in new games. There's not a solidified core audience, new games have been seeing poor debuts after poor debuts and it's like an endless chain. At the same time, Nintendo fans have been getting less and less content, to the extent that the only choice they had was GC ports or casual games. Lastly, the casual, new gamers audience has shown that they don't intend to buy many games, simply Wii Fit/Sports/Play/Kart seem to be enough for them, because even sequels to semi big hits like Deca Sports or new casual games like Wii Shape Boxing or Let's Tap sold really bad.

It's too late and too little, I agree. This is only aimed at a part of the audience, and ironically that's the userbase that buys less games. I don't think we will see a big boost at all after this launches, because there's nothing else even planned to release near it that could ride the momentum. I'd say that games using WM+ will arrive in mid 2010 if we go by time spans from other Nintendo peripherals.

One last point is that, if Nintendo doesn't see Japan as viable for home consoles anymore, why in the hell do they use most of their resources to produce Japanese centric games that will be lucky to see a Wsetern release, shouldnt it be the other way? Shift resources to the West, where people actually BUY GAMES and stop being so conservative and nationalist. People in Japan showed that they don't buy many games anymore, even 1st party, so start making games for us and then port them to Japan if considered to be reasonable. There's a bigger userbase here, they cant ignore it anymore.

@trestres, there are already a ton of Wii games that utilize WM+. There are more choices than just WSR.  Honestly, I could go through your entire post and find faults up and down in it.  Either you are joking or you are far out there.  Suicide to release a Wii game right now??? lol...........  Nintendo shifted its focus???  You don't even know what games Nintendo will release later this year.  They haven't even announced them yet...

Aren't we talking about Japan here? Are you people serious, you just criticize for the sake of it? What games using M+ are releveant to Japan? WSR ONLY.

So get your facts straight or don't even bother answering.