Recently a large number of articles have come out critisizing Nintendo. Most of these were the result of the less than steller sales of both Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and MadWorld (the same two games highlighted by Adibobea9 just a few weeks ago). MadWorld sold about 66,000 last month and Chinatown Wars sold about 88,000 last month. This knee jerk reaction to the low sales is very misplaced.
To illustrate this I want to dissect one article that was published by Yahoo! UK and look at the strength of their arguments. The article can be found here; but I will quote their article in context as well (and put some facts that they cite into their proper context).
The articles main premise is that the Wii is starting to fall out of favor in Japan and therefore the system is destined to crash ("Most worrying for Nintendo is how sudden the interest has waned. The wave of videogame popularity usually rocks Japan first, then the US and finally across Europe and the rest of the world"). To support how much interest has wained in Japan they point out how the Wii barely outsold the xBox360 in Japan last week ("Last week Wii barely outsold the beleaguered Xbox 360 with 13,349 units versus 10,134 respectively.") What they fail to mention however is that the PS3 barely outsold the Wii last week as well (16,701 - 13,349). They also fail to mention that the Wii has sold roughly 8 million units in Japan while the PS3 has only managed to move a little over 3 million.
They also talk how the PS3 and PSP have begun to gain momentum in Japan. As evidence of this the article cites the fact that even new PS2 games top WiiFit on the sales chart ("PlayStation 3 and PSP are now pulling ahead and gaining momentum in Japan, which is still by far the most discerning market in the world for videogames. Even the latest PlayStation 2 games are outperforming Wii Fit in the Japanese Top 10"). While this is true (Suggoi! Arcana Heart 2 sold an estimated 11,000 and Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu 2009 sold an estimated 10,000 while WiiFit only sold an estimated 9,000) it also fails to consider that WiiFit has been out in Japan for 72 weeks. The PS3 game with the current longest reign in the top 20 is Biohazard 5 which has been on the chartz for 6 weeks but only managed to move around 7,000 units. It also fails to recognize that Nintendo has sold more units of WiiFit than Sony has sold PS3s. Yet clearly it is Nintendo that is failing.
The article doesn't stop at attacking Nintendo's performance in Japan. They also cite the Wii's inability in Europe to have any game in the top 10 besides WiiFit ("By now, and judging by the ongoing failure of anything other than Wii Fit to dominate the UK Top 10, it's fair to accuse Nintendo Wii of being a two trick pony. Folks are picking up Wii to play Wii Sports and Wii Fit and that's about it"). However, last week in the Europe/Others region there were four Wii games in the top 5 (Wii Sports, WiiFit, Mario Kart Wii, and Wii Play).
The article also cites problems in America as well. Wii sales in March 2009 were down 17% compared with March 2008. There are two important points to put this decline in context. First, the Wii still easily outsold both the xBox360 and the PS3 last month (610,000 > 330,000 > 218,000). Clearly no crash here. Also last years March Wii sales were higher than normal because of the boost received from the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl on March 9th. Considering this, the Wii may even be selling better nominally than it was last year (especially considering the state of the economy).
Putting the cited statistics into their proper light I think it is absurd to think that the Wii is crashing. Are they less dominate than they once were? Yes. Is that innevitable after dominating all of the competition for nearly three years? Yes. Nintendo can still continue to build upon their success with even more innovative games in the coming years.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment