Nintendo delaying first party titles to ensure continuing Wii U sales

30 Oct, 2012

During a Q&A Investors talk, Nintendo CEO & President Satoru Iwata revealed that the company is deliberately delaying some of it's first party titles to ensure that the sales of the Wii U continue into 2013.

Iwata has told investors that the machine is guaranteed to do well at on release but that the main challenge it faces will be maintaining any potential sales spike.

"If you look at how preorders are doing at the moment, it is not an exaggeration to say that Wii U is sure to sell well in this holiday season," stated the Nintendo President. "But we realise the biggest challenge is to make sure that Wii U sells well even in the next year after the holiday season, and we are working on that too."

"Nintendo tends to release too many titles at the launch of a hardware system and as a result suffers a drop in new games for quite some time after launch, and for the Wii U launch, we are being very careful not to let it happen.? Iwata continued.

"Fortunately, third-party publishers overseas are launching many titles for us this time, and we were able to push back the release of some of the titles that we had originally intended to release as launch titles until next year,"

"We will continue to supply software to provide new content that consumers will talk about even after January. The combination of these two things is what we think will keep our momentum going after January next year."

Edited On 30 Oct, 2012

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“ Not really getting this strategy, wouldn't an incredible launch line up mean continued sales anyway and better launch sales figures? ”

Zealotus 7 months ago

“ Considering launch stock is expected to sell out they can't really increase hardware sales at launch. ”

Gloria 7 months ago

“ So what are they hoping to do? artificially create demand and hype in stead of meeting demand? ”

Zealotus 7 months ago

“ It's called sustaining interest. Or maybe they're just rationing out the games so we don't end up with a massive dry spell. :) ”

Gloria 7 months ago

“ I would have preferred more first party games at launch, but I'm fine with this, better to have one or two every few months than long periods with nothing at all. ”

Gloria 7 months ago

“ Agreed. Last first party really worth shouting about on the Wii was Zelda. Last exclusive was Pandora's Tower. Either way it's been a few months. Look at 2011. We had Kirby early year. Xenoblade in...August. Zelda in November. Hmmm. ”

Robichoico 7 months ago

“ As long as they have strong launch titles, it's not a bad idea. Maybe they learnt from the Vita, which didn't get any decent titles for probably 4-5 months, which made people lose interest..... ”

Bruticus 7 months ago

“ I'm still kinda upset that Pikmin has been delayed since that's the one I really wanted with Zombiu and then picking up Mario once the 3DS verion's novelty worn off. And I'm not entirely sure that delaying it to go up against the likes of Bioshock, Tomb Raider and all of the big name games early next year will pay off. It's hardly one of Nintendo's BIG properties like Zelda, Pokemon or Metroid is. Hopefully it'll pay off for them. I'm expecting the big guns to be coming from April/May onwards so... ”

Robichoico 7 months ago

“ I think this is a good move from Nintendo. It knows that most people are likely to only buy the console and one or two games at launch anyway, pre-order figure will show this. They also show the console is guarenteed to sell so extra titles at launch won't shift many extra consoles. The best thing is that early adopters won't see a long wait for new games to come along once they have finished with launch titles. ”

adwan 7 months ago

“ I've always been a late adopter (only just got around to getting a Wii!), so this approach pretty much plays into my hands. That's assuming Nintendo's previous statement that the Wii U will be sold at a loss doesn't mean they go bust before they get around to actually releasing their first-party games, though! :D ”

hairyneville 7 months ago

“ I shouldn't think so, they made stacks with the Wii and DS, which has allowed them to take some risks this generation. ”

Gloria 7 months ago

“ What?? This is stupid. If you are confident about your product / products you should launch them when they are ready?? ”

mattbladen 7 months ago

“ Well, at least one thing you can say about Nintendo, they don't release unfinished games and expect people to wait for them to fix them like some companies I could name. :) ”

Gloria 7 months ago

“ I doubt it's due to a lack of confidence about they're own products, but more a lack in confidence in third party support right at this moment. They have some good support from a few developers but need a lot more to convince the more hardcore gamer that they need a Wii U alongside/instead of their 360 or PS3. Staggering out first-party titles means they may have more of a chance to pull in other gamers/late adopters more easily. ”

adwan 7 months ago

“ Still a bit of a skeptical hippo on Wii U but I'm willing to give them a chance on their non hand held console this time I'll see how it goes. ”

swiftjay 7 months ago

“ Still a bit of a skeptical hippo on Wii U but I'm willing to give them a chance on their non hand held console this time I'll see how it goes. ”

swiftjay 7 months ago

“ Still a bit of a skeptical hippo on Wii U but I'm willing to give them a chance on their non hand held console this time I'll see how it goes. ”

swiftjay 7 months ago

“ whoops sorry about triple post can't seem to delete them either... ”

swiftjay 7 months ago

“ It sounds like Nintendo are less than optimistic about how successful third party releases on the Wii U are likely to be if they don't think non-first party titles can be relied on to keep sales going during post launch months. To be fair, given how badly third party software sales trailed off after the honeymoon period was over on pretty much every one of their consoles since the N64, they're probably right to be nervous. However, if they think Pikmin is going to be enough to shift consoles on it's own during Q1 2013 in terms of first party IPs, they clearly have very short memories about that franchise. They really do not seem to have a lot ready for the next six months. ”

PrometheusFan 7 months ago

“ That you know about. Nintendo are good at keeping their cards close to their chest, and probably have a good few games in production for next year that nobody has a clue about yet. ”

Gloria 7 months ago

“ Even with that in mind, they're still not going to have time to announce and release anything major enough to justify the cost of a Wii U within the next six months, as I said. Earliest they'll likely be able to announce anything big is E3 next June, earliest anything announced at E3 could be released is next Autumn or thereabouts. That's almost a year's worth of 'maybes' they have alongside the imminent announcements of next generation hardware from competitors. This doesn't sound like the time for a smart business to be playing anything 'close to it's chest'. ”

PrometheusFan 7 months ago

“ They don't need any sort of event to announce something, they just hold a press conference, like they did to detail the Wii U release date and pricing. ”

Gloria 7 months ago

“ Gloria's right. You don't have to have a big event like E3 to announce a new game. If that was the case we'd only get about two periods of new games each year and nothing in between. ”

adwan 7 months ago

“ You'll have to forgive kevin, he's the resident Nintendo hating troll round here :) ”

Gloria 7 months ago

“ Ah I see! ”

adwan 7 months ago

“ Your constant sniping at me is getting extremely tedious Gloria. I don't 'hate' Nintendo, I'm just not prepared to give them a free pass on stupid moves as so many of the rose-tinted nostalgia junkies that comprise so much of their fanbase seem to be willing to. I'm sorry if you can't handle differing opinions on this matter. ”

PrometheusFan 7 months ago

“ Can't really blame them for not trusting 3rd party releases to keep the WiiU relevant. The amount of complete garbage that was churned out for the Wii was/is eye-watering. I think it's a good move, they fell behind with the 'hardcore' gamers with the Wii, so banking on games that will even be multi-platform isn't going to be smart because they may buy them on another console, due to the precedent the Wii set before it. With good quality first party titles being held back and completely polished, they'll all sell well periodically. ”

Sontailsic 7 months ago

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