14 DAY TRIAL // Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has revealed that customers from all around the world are now eagerly awaiting new home consoles, basing its statements on the dwindling sales experienced by the company’s Wii as well as its rivals, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
The current generation of consoles has been around for quite some time and it seems that the market has reached saturation, at least according to Nintendo itself, which says that although the Wii is still selling quite a lot of units, figures are down when compared to previous years.
"I think that the market is now waiting for a new proposal for home consoles," Iwata said. "Along with effects from our trade marketing activities in December which mainly focused on the Nintendo 3DS, we were not able to sell the Wii as well as we usually do. However, not just the Wii, but the overall performance of home consoles in December was lower than the previous year."
Iwata also highlights that not even a big game like The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was able to sell lots of units and even other markets like Europe are showing signs of sales slowdown.
"Usually, the Wii enjoys high sales in December, but last year, even though The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was highly acclaimed, we were not able to expand it sufficiently to our target audience, and although the Wii was the platform which sold the most software in December, we were not able to propose new Nintendo titles to our broad audience,” Iwata mentioned.
"In Europe," the Nintendo executive continued, "it resulted that out of the home consoles, the Wii sold the most in December; however, we can see that the beginning of the year-end sales was slower and the peak was lower compared to that of the previous year."
Iwata’s statements echo those from UK-based retailer GAME, which also mentioned that slow sales are a sure sign that customers are now waiting for new home consoles, like the upcoming Wii U or the oft-rumored PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720.
Besides the Wii U, however, neither Sony nor Microsoft are preparing successors to their current devices.