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Pressure on Nintendo to cut Wii price?
Mike Bantick
Friday, 14 November 2008 07:09
Page 2 of 2
Well having cornered the sales market, Nintendo has every right to stand back, looking aloof and disinterested in the whole idea of a next-gen console price war. Basically what they are doing right now, even the latest sales figures bear this out.
In the U.S October figures show the Wii outselling nearest rival by over 2 to 1. NPD tells us:
• Wii - 803,000
• Nintendo DS - 491,000
• Xbox 360 - 371,000
• PSP - 193,000
• PlayStation 3 - 190,000
• PlayStation 2 - 136,000
So why bother with a price cut? Well logic does indeed dictate that there is no pressure to do so. But my prediction is that the pressure may indeed be rising, and post Christmas 2009 Nintendo may feel the first of this.
At over two years into this current generation of the console wars, who are the consumers left in the market to sell to?
Surely most hard-core gamers have what they want, or if anything would be considering an upgrade in the gaming hardware they have already (perhaps moving from an Xbox Pro to Elite or upgrade PC architecture for example), upgrading pretty much leaves the Wii out of contention.
Next up are more casual gamers, and though Nintendo are not concerned about Microsoft and Sony’s continued push for this demographic, both the Xbox 360 and PS3 (as a migration from traditional PS2 titles such as SingStar and Buzz attest) are attacking the casual gamer market with renewed vigour.
Nintendo has its current suite of software titles to cling to the casual demographic, and this will carry them forward for some time to come, but games such as Wii Music & Wii Sports Resort don’t hold the appeal of the older Wii games, and with a low attachment rate, even current Wii owners could start looking to the competition software for new fun.
Yes Nintendo are riding high, but come Q1/Q2 2009 it will be time for another patented Myiamoto Nintendo surprise or, yep, a price cut to hardware to shift the Wii phenomenon into overdrive.
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