November 2 4:08 P.M.
Price cut or no, the Wii's just not enthusing consumers the way it once did -- and its competitors are capitalizing on its weakness.
September saw the Wii dip to third place behind the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's own DS, which also dropped back from the prior month, although it retained its habitual first place. Wii sales in the six months to September are down 43% over the same period last year, and although Wii Sports Resort continues to sell well, a sparse holiday software calendar means there's still tough times to come for the machine.
There's no more obvious way to revive flagging consumer interest in a console than to slash the price, and Nintendo indeed trimmed $50 from the Wii's price at the end of September. We'll have to wait another few weeks to find out whether a discount was enough to improve the machine's fortunes, but with few new exclusive games to enthuse consumers it's still going to be a tough sell.
What's not in question, though, is the fact that Nintendo's profits have hit the skids, dropping over 50% from last year. The company's president, Satoru Iwata, told analysts and investors last week that the Wii has stalled.
"Games of high demand could not be continuously released and the good mood has chilled," Iwata said. He went on to note that it will be difficult to recover from "the slowdown in demand", but was optimistic about Nintendo's ability to continue selling Wiis.
Conversely, buoyed by its own price cut and the promise of several strong exclusive releases, Sony's Playstation 3 hit the top of the sales charts in September for the first time since its release. There was good news for Microsoft, too: Halo: ODST, despite something of a tepid response from critics, sold over a million and a half copies in just over a week.
And with the just-announced DSi XL not expected to debut in Western markets until next year, Iwata will have his work cut out to prevent September's chill from turning into the Wii's first frosty holiday season.
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Posted: 2 Nov 2009
