3DS Failures Will Not Be Repeated with Wii U, Says Nintendo

The senior leadership of Nintendo has announced that the worse-than-expected launch performance of the Nintendo 3DS handheld has served as a learning experience for the company and will influence how the launch of the Wii U home console will be structured.

Satoru Iwata, president and chief executive officer of Nintendo, told investors after the company announced financial results that, “For the launch of new hardware, it is, of course, regarded as a sort of requisite not to miss the critical year-end sales season.”

He added, “The company is aiming to firmly complete the development of the entire system and prepare sufficient software so that the Wii U will be at its best at the time of the launch. Needless to say, we have learned a bitter lesson from the launch of the Nintendo 3DS.”

The 3DS was revealed under pressure from the gaming press and Nintendo hurried to launch it during the 2010 holiday season but missed the date and delivered it during the first months of last year.

The launch line-up of video games was unimpressive and the high price of the hardware put gamers off, which resulted in less than impressive sales, both in Japan and in the West, for about six months.

Then Nintendo cut prices by about 20 percent and launched a series of high profile games including Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land which boosted interest from gamers, enabling the device to sell better during its first nine months than both the original DS and the Game Boy Advance.

The Wii U is being re-revealed to the public at the E3 2012 trade show and Nintendo promised that it would be out all over the world before the end of this year.

The company has not yet revealed which video games will be ready to launch at the same time as the hardware or the price of the Wii U.