Customers for Wii U Will Be Different, Says Nintendo

The Nintendo Wii U might be about one year from launch but the Japanese manufacturer says that it plans to continue support for its older devices and plans to target a new breed of consumers with its new platform.

Reggie Fils-Aime, who is the leader of the United States division of Nintendo, has stated, “The consumer buying Wii hardware today is going to be a different consumer than the one who will be buying Wii U in the future. This is the first holiday that the Wii is available at $149.99 or below, so its an expanded demographic we’re reaching. These are consumers who have heard about Wii for the past couple years, but at $199 or $249 it was economically out of their reach.”

He says that Nintendo will continue to hold back the exact pricing of the Wii U but that both the console and games for it will be differently priced than for current generation hardware.

Fils-Aime added, “We do believe that Wii and Wii U will coexist for some time. As we drive the install base of Wii, we’re really setting people up to take their gaming library and be able to transfer it over to Wii U.”

The Nintendo executive has also revealed that Skyward Sword is now the fastest selling Legend of Zelda game ever launched, which shows that the install base in the United States, which currently stands at about 37 million units, can still deliver blockbuster status to good games.

Nintendo suggested that Skyward Sword will likely be the last high profile game from the company which arrives only for the Wii, with teams now switching to the Wii U platform for their upcoming projects.

The Wii U is set to deliver the same computing power as the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 and will have a touch screen powered controller.