Iwata Predicts Extraordinary Sales for Nintendo Videogames

There's no denying that 2009 is, at the moment, a dark year for videogaming. Most companies are reporting reduced revenue and losses, and the North American market, the largest in the world, is in free fall, with sales set to decline by 22% in July.

Still, there's one company showing a lot of optimism in the face of adversity, even as its fiscal year began with a 60% drop in profit. That company is Nintendo and its president is saying that three videogames in its portfolio, New Super Mario Bros, Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus, might end up selling more than 10 million units world wide this year.

Satoru Iwata talked to analysts as part of a question and answer session following the release of the financial results and told them that “These three titles have already been available for hands-on demonstrations at E3 this year. They were highly evaluated by most of those who actually tried them. Distributors also gave feedback like 'The key player of this holiday season will be Nintendo as expected.'”

The Nintendo president also said that Wii Music and Animal Crossing: City Folk were projected to sell more than they did in the end, with the company seeing their sales of 2.65 and 3.38 million units rather disappointing. They were intended to pick up sales once Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit began to peak but they failed to do their job.

Of the three titles that Iwata mentioned, only Wii Sports Resort has already been released. The title is out in Japan, where it has been shadowed by the success of Dragon Quest IX and Monster Hunter 3, and Nintendo recently announced that sales in the United States reached half a million units, while European bought 600,000 copies of the game.