14 DAY TRIAL // Speaking at the BMO Capital Markets Interactive Entertainment Conference, Reggie Fils-Aime, the president of Nintendo of America, has told the audience that Wii Fit can be called an “evergreen” game as it had maintained its sales numbers over the period since launch. This is the result of a change in the way Nintendo views the videogaming market.
Fils-Aime has said that, “By now, you all know how Nintendo chose a fundamentally different path. Instead of competing for the very best players, we decided to shoot for the most players.” The broadening of the market has been the foundation on which the success of Nintendo Wii, which sells consistently more than the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the PlayStation 3 from Sony, is based, and has also helped Nintendo made videogames for the platform sell like hot cakes.
Titles like Nintendogs, Brain Age and Wii Fit are best sellers mainly because they “question the very definition of a video game, and they're also changing the way we look at the software business.”
Recent chart data shows that AAA releases from publishers like Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard generate a lot of sales in the first few weeks. After that, a title that was at number one at one time can quickly drop from the top ten, and disappear from the conscience of gamers. GTA IV conquered the charts and then went away while Wii Fit managed to sell constantly from February to October.
Fils-Aims also took the opportunity to show brief demonstrations of titles aimed at the hardcore audience, including Punch Out! and The Conduit for the Nintendo Wii. He concluded that “wider appeal can also translate to longer appeal and maybe even to better appeal,” showing how Nintendo managed to sell games solidly for a long period, rather than aiming for big selling releases followed by periods of steady declining numbers.