Nintendo chief Satoru Iwata says that the company’s home land of Japan is actually the most challenging market for game consoles in the world today.
Sales of the Wii in Japan “cannot be described as healthy,” Iwata remarked. “The total Japanese market is less than one sixth of that of the US, and about one fourth of the major European countries …There exists major differences in market size today… When we compare the unit hardware sales, Japanese sales are about two sevenths of the US, and more than half of the four major European countries. It can be said that Japan today is the challenging market for home console software to sell… (Even) the price cut seems to have the least impact here than other parts of the world… It is our urgent mission to recover the momentum of Wii during the holidays utilising Nintendo’s strength.” Iwata went on to admit that the sales of the Wii have dropped in recent times, and not just in Japan. “Since the software we launched at the end of 2008 did not go on to sell for an extended period of time, and we were not able to launch very strong titles in the first half of this year, we have seen a significant drop in software sales this year. As a result, Wii software unit sales share is just below 50 percent of the entire home console software market so far in 2009.”
Iwata will no doubt be hoping that the upcoming release of the much anticipated new game in the popular “Super Mario Bros” series will at least help to alleviate the Wii’s struggling sales.
