Nintendo explains the lack of major first-party Wii U titles

Nintendo had initially planned to have a couple more first-party Wii U games out by now, but in the financial results briefing, Satoru Iwata revealed that these releases were delayed to ensure they were of the highest quality.

“We originally planned to release a few first-party titles for Wii U during the first half of this year, but no big titles are scheduled for release before Pikmin 3 in July [in Japan] because we decided to take time to add the final touches to ensure that consumers fully feel that they are valuable titles. The brand of a franchise would be completely degraded without customer satisfaction.”

Iwata further clarified that development staff were actually pulled from future titles to work on titles for the Wii U launch, like New Super Mario Bros U, to ensure that they were ready for the console’s launch, and in doing so they had to leave the development teams of other titles understaffed.

Iwata-san said that Nintendo have found software development becoming more challenging, especially as consumers are becoming more selective about their entertainment choices. He mentioned that the consumers who are willing to pay the price of a retail console game have high expectations for what their money buys them, and that unless a game sells a huge number of units, it may not even break even.

He did however state that even though consumers have become more selective, the sales of the games that consumers do end up selecting are larger than they have ever been. For this reason, Nintendo is ensuring that games they release are going to be of a high enough quality to become popular and sell enough to become viable.

Finally, Iwata admitted to Nintendo’s failure so far to really communicate exactly why consumers would want a Wii U. He mentioned that “Some have the misunderstanding that Wii U is just Wii with a pad for games, and others even consider Wii U GamePad as a peripheral device connectable to Wii, we feel deeply responsible for not having tried hard enough to have consumers understand the product.”

We tend to agree with this point of view regarding delayed releases. A delay of a few months will be forgotten soon enough, but a truly great game will remain great forever.

How do you feel about Nintendo’s admission to failing to properly market the Wii U, and delaying games? Let us know over in the forums or in the comments.