14 DAY TRIAL // One of the main public faces of hardware maker and video game publisher Nintendo has stated that his company is not currently prepared to talk about a new home console, to replace the Wii, and that he expects the current hardware to move many more units before a successor is revealed.
Speking with Kotaku as part of a bigger interview Reggie Fils-Aime, who is the president of the North American division of Nintendo, has stated, “As we sit here today we're saying the Wii has many, many more units to sell.”
He added, “After we've reached an installed base of 45 million here in the U.S., we can have a conversation about the next generation.”
The interviewer pushed the point and asked whether next holiday season pressure from Sony and Microsoft will force Nintendo to unveil a new piece of hardware and Fils-Aime quickly said “No”.
At the moment Nintendo has managed to sell a little over 30 million Nintendo home consoles in North America, which means that the company will wait to have another 15 million under its belt before talking publicly about the Wii 2.
There are signs that the Nintendo Wii has peaked in terms of sales and is now in a slow decline, although Fils-Aime has said that his company's product manages to sell better than the PlayStation 2 from Sony at the same time during its life time.
The problem for Nintendo is that its has lost its uniqueness this fall, as Sony put out the PlayStation Move and Microsoft launched Kinect, two motion tracking systems that advertise themselves as more accurate that the Wiimote.
At the moment analysts predict that the Xbox 360 will manage to top the hardware chart for October in North America, with the Wii expected to see a drop of as much as 60 percent over the same period of last year.