World Wii sales slump by 43%
CEO admits console has 'stalled'
Nintendo has admitted that Wii sales have “stalled” after reporting a 43 per cent drop in global sales of the console during the first six months of the firm’s current financial year.
The company sold 5.7m Wiis during the six months to 30 September, compared to 10.1m during the year-ago half.
Global Wii videogame sales also dropped by six per cent during H1 FY2010, Nintendo said. Some 76.2m Wii games were sold in the half-year period, compared to sales of 81.4m during the same period last year.
“Wii has stalled," said Nintendo’s CEO, Satoru Iwata, according to Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun. "We were unable to continue to release strong software."
The outlook for Nintendo as a global gaming powerhouse now looks dim, with the firm reporting a 52 per cent drop in net profit for half to ¥65.9bn (£440m/$721m/€491m).
Nintendo has also now cut its full-year net profit forecast by 23 per cent to ¥230bn (£1.5bn/$2.5bn/€1.7bn). ®
COMMENTS
It's a dogs life
" In the case of the Wii the world + his dog have aready got one"
You can actually add you're dog into the new Wii Fit Plus... I'm not kidding.
re: fad
the wii is a fad?
right, and the the ps3 and xbox360 are what exactly?
face it, the wii won this round, with time to spare to put out a wii2 that *would still make money on day 1* while ms and sony are left with their *graphics have been pushed as far as they can go, so no more improvements until the next generation* consoles. (as if its graphics that matter most - well i suppose if your business model depends on first person shooters then you need something to make your game stand out)
I agree that making a direct comparison between the wii and the other 2 is difficult, but then Nintendo's bean counters couldn't give a shit about whether you think the wii is a "proper" console - a tactic often used by the infamous sony fanboy mark so he can say his ps3 is the fastest selling console (while pointing at the 360s earlier launch date)
oops i didnt mean that to sound quite as ranty.
oh wait, im lying.
and as for the comparison with the ps2...
why would someone buy a 9 year old console if they weren't just replacing the one that they had broken? how many games are still being released for it? outside of Japan i mean? People buy second hand sness for the misty eyed nostalgia. same for the dreamcast and ps2.
more decent games!
i dont care about all the new peripherals...i just want some more decent games. there have been hardly any triple A titles released for the platform this past year - most titles have been shovelware or 3rd party derivatives - and version 2 or 3 of a launch title :-(
give me some decent new IP and some new decent games - its a little shocking when some of the best titles are cheap WiiWare titles and the best you can hope for is a release of some 8bit or 16bit re-release on the VirtualConsole :-(
Rapidly lost
Richard 102, the word they actually used, 失速 (shissoku), literally means "rapidly lose" (e.g. power, height, or in this case, presumably, sales). Like "stall", also used in reference to an aeroplane or engine, but the Japanese version is somewhat more literal, not too far from "plummet", really.
The novelty has worn off
It's surprising that the Wii lasted longer than the ten minutes it takes to realise it's completely pointless while you're playing one.
