Iwata: A single game can greatly infulence the fate of a video game system

Last week’s post investor briefing Q&A has been fully translated by Nintendo and now we can get some more insight from Satoru Iwata from questions asked of him by investors and media at the briefing.

Iwata was asked about the lower prediction for Wii U sales (now 3.6 million in its third year) and how if they’re aiming this low how could anyone expect sales to rise to 5, 10 million the following years.

Iwata responded with “In order to recreate momentum and sell 5.00 million or 10.00 million units of hardware annually, there are indeed challenges that we must overcome. And in the face of these challenges, announcing more optimistic figures before we actually release the Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. titles to consumers, would not be compatible with our original stance to provide rather conservative figures, so once again we set our estimates by considering how much we could realistically hope to achieve with our software lineup”. Nintendo are simply being more realistic with their goals so people aren’t as disappointing when they don’t sell as many (if they fall short again). Smash Bros and Mario Kart 8 will be huge, but how huge?

“The fate of a video game system is often influenced greatly by the introduction of a single title. As many of you probably remember, before the release of the Pokémon game, Game Boy had been showing slow growth, and many people wondered whether it was the end of Game Boy. But the Pokémon game singlehandedly changed the landscape of the system, which then started to show the strongest sales in the lifecycle of the system.”

Iwata clearly believes that best days for the Wii U are still to come and that ‘one’ game could turn it around. He says they will be working hard on the Wii U to make sure the 3.6 million they have planned for this financial year isn’t the peak of the console.