The company has seen most stores sell their consoles very quickly

Nov 15, 2012 23:41 GMT  ·  By

Scott Moffitt, a vice president of sales and marketing at Nintendo of America, has defended the upcoming Wii U home console from accusations that it costs too much, saying that the company was careful when choosing its price point to appeal to as many gamers as possible.

Moffit tells GamesIndustry that, “All I can say is that the response has been phenomenal and we’re getting, especially in the higher priced deluxe set, that one’s selling out incredibly quickly. That seems to indicate that the pricing’s in a good spot and the proof is in the consumer response.”

He also assures players that despite high demand from retailers, Nintendo will try to make sure that there are enough systems to go around.

“I can tell you this – on opening week we will have more systems on hand for the Wii U than we did for the launch of Wii. And, second, our replenishments will be more frequent this holiday time than during the Wii launch,” says the Nintendo executive.

He also tries to hedge his bets by adding that no company can predict exact demand for its products and that patience is required during the launch window of a high profile device.

Analysts believe that the Wii U will perform better on launch than the older Wii and that it might move more than 3.5 million devices before the end of 2012.

At the same time, the new hardware platform is expected to have less long-term appeal, which might mean that it would lose sales throughout 2013.

The new console includes a GamePad controller which has a touchscreen and delivers more computing power than the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.

The Wii U launches on the North American market on November 18 and on November 30 in Europe, while Japanese gamers will have to wait until December 8 to get access to it.