14 DAY TRIAL // James Honeywell, the head of the consumer marketing division at Nintendo Europe, says that his company has big plans for the Christmas season and for the first quarter of 2013, designed to keep the Wii U home console relevant.
The executive tells MCV that, “We definitely want to maintain momentum in Q1 – that’s our focus right now, maintain the balance throughout the quarter and onwards, for the duration of Wii U. For us, it’s not just about launch, it’s about building momentum and maintaining that over a long period of time.”
“Nintendo always makes sure it launches games throughout the year. We don’t really focus particularly on Christmas. We’ve got a strong line-up all the way through the year. We always have the marketing to support that. We have plans to take sampling all the way through the year,” he adds.
A number of analysts believe that Nintendo has launched too many games alongside the Wii U and that it will be hard for the company to supply the titles needed to keep the platform relevant in the coming months.
The Wii U is now available all over the world and Nintendo plans to move at least 5.5 million units before the end of March 2013.
Sony has often described the PlayStation 3 as being the platform with momentum and some Wii U fans might worry that the word is used to limit player expectations by Nintendo.
Satoru Iwata has recently said that he and developer Shigeru Miyamoto have plans to introduce Zelda and Mario video games for the Wii U in 3D, but that they don’t have official announcements to make for now.
At the moment, NintendoLand is used to show off the abilities of the Wii U, but a new Mario game would probably become a must buy for all fans of the character and the device.