Market now ready for new home consoles – Nintendo

It’s time for some new home hardware says Nintendo’s president.

The Wii didn’t sell as well as it usually does this December and Nintendo thinks it’s time for some new blood on the home console scene. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said today at an investors meeting that “the market is now waiting for a new proposal for home consoles”. Not only has the Wii been down this year but also the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Iwata did admit that the Xbox 360 maintained “large momentum” over the whole year but December as a whole was down.

“Usually, the Wii enjoys high sales in December, but last year, even though ’The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword’ was highly acclaimed, we were not able to expand it sufficiently to our target audience, and although the Wii was the platform which sold the most software in December, we were not able to propose new Nintendo titles to our broad audience,” Iwata told the meeting.

“Therefore, except for Ubisoft’s Just Dance 3 there were no Wii titles with huge sales in the year-end sales season. Along with effects from our trade marketing activities in December which mainly focused on the Nintendo 3DS, we were not able to sell the Wii as well as we usually do.

“However, not just the Wii, but the overall performance of home consoles in December was lower than the previous year, and I think that the market is now waiting for a new proposal for home consoles.”

The Wii U is set to hit the market before next Xbox and Playstation with a launch of the system planned worldwide before the end of 2012. Microsoft is expected to announce its plans for the ’next generation’ at E3 2012 but when they would actually release their next console remains to be seen. The Playstation 3 will be around for a while says Sony.

So are you ready for a new console?

Source: Eurogamer