14 DAY TRIAL // Satoru Iwata, the leader of Nintendo, says that his company has failed to adequately support the launch of the new Wii U home console with high-profile first-party titles because it has lacked the resources to back all its internal development teams.
He tells investors in a conference call that, "The reason for the delayed release of our first-party titles was the fact that completing the games released at the same time as the launch of Wii U required more development resources than expected, so some staff members from development teams working on other titles had to help complete them.”
The Wii U has failed to sell the number of devices that Nintendo was expecting, which led the company to post worse than expected financial results in April.
Iwata adds, “the sales of popular games are much larger than in the past. Therefore, if we create more hit games, the software development business can still be very profitable. All games break even if they sell millions of copies worldwide, so we will continue to do our best to develop games which have high sales potential.”
Nintendo still has ambitious plans for its Wii U console and wants to sell at least 9 million devices during the current fiscal year.
To achieve this goal, the company needs to announce and then launch a number of high-profile titles for the platform, created both by internal and by third-party teams.
Nintendo executives have also recently commented on the possibility that the NFC technology in the GamePad could be used to power microtransaction-driven experiences.
The Wii U revival will be hampered by the launch of the PlayStation 4 console from Sony and the Xbox 720 from Microsoft, which are expected to arrive before the end of the year.
Traditionally, Nintendo has relied on unique gameplay experiences to sell its hardware, but that model seems to be struggling with the Wii U, which lacks a feature as engaging as motion tracking.