Wii 2 Delay Is Hurting Nintendo

BanjoTed writes "Michael Pachter's ongoing spat with Nintendo regarding the Wii 2 is well documented. Pachter is sure it's coming, Nintendo says it's not. Now the analyst has gone one further by claiming that the declining sales of the Wii documented in the platform holder's recent financial statements will only get worse unless it speeds up attempts to get its successor to market. He said, 'The reason for this is clear: the software being created is just not interesting enough or compelling enough to drive Wii owners to buy more than two [games] per year, and most of those purchases are first party software. We can blame the third party publishers for making shovelware, or for misjudging the Wii market, but the simple fact is that the publishers have to develop completely separate games for the Wii because its CPU is not powerful.'"

Re:Just Call it the WiiPad

[biryokumaru]

Done [9to5mac.com].

Re:Who is Michael Pachter?

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't seem to have a Wikipedia page so he must not be notable.

Re:Who is Michael Pachter?

[bloodhawk]

He's is the so called analyst with perhaps the worst track record in predicting what is happening in the gaming industry.
Eg here is his prediction at the start of this generation of gaming consoles.
"In 2010, Sony’s going to have 55%, Microsoft’s going to have 35% and Nintendo 10%, with all three of those having plus or minus 5%."

Re:Gee, didn't someone get lynched for saying that

[phantomfive]

I don't know if you've been paying attention for the past few years, but Nintendo has been making money hand over fist [dailynintendo.com] since the Wii was released. Unlike Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo doesn't use their console as a loss leader, they make a ton of cash with each sale, and make money on the games as well. This 'analyst' hasn't analyzed very well.

Re:Gee, didn't someone get lynched for saying that

[Vectormatic]

For nintendo it does, the wii has never been sold at a loss (well what do you expect? take gamecube hardware, do a dieshrink/clockbump and tack on some ram, sell for three times the price... profit!).

Off course the games are also an important factor, but unlike MS/Sony, each wii sold actually means money going into nintendo's pocket. a ps3 sold with only 2 games in its life might mean a nett loss for sony, but for nintendo, they are ahead from day one

Re:Gee, didn't someone get lynched for saying that

[phantomfive]

Sells acceptably well? Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if sales of the Wii are declining because everyone has one.

Interesting thought, just for comparison I did some research: it seems the PS2 has sold around twice as many as the Wii. I am not sure when the PS2 sales started slowing down, but there is definitely room for more Wii sales.

Re:Gee, didn't someone get lynched for saying that

[romiz]

Wii sports is sold separately from the console in Japan, which did not prevent it from selling 3.7 million copies. It makes this game the 22nd in the all-time best sales list, which is still a good result.

Re:Gee, didn't someone get lynched for saying that

[Fritzed]

You could actually look it up [vgchartz.com], and you would see that the Wii is still doing better at this point then the PS2 was doing this many weeks after launch.

Re:Gee, didn't someone get lynched for saying that

[scurker]

And the fact that most wii owners have very low attach rates for games also hurts the prospects for the wii2.

According to Nintendo's own numbers (released yesterday), this is simply not true [nintendo.co.jp]. The worldwide software to hardware ratio is 7.68 to 1, in the US it's 8.9 to 1. Last I checked that was ahead of the PS3 and only a little bit behind the 360. One might could make an argument that a few of those are 3rd party titles, but as far as general software sales are concerned, Nintendo has no need for concern.