Analyst: Poor Wii Music, Animal Crossing sales stamina to blame for downturn

[wraggster]

Wii sales have been the lowest they've ever been in Japan. Is the Japanese public losing interest? Screen Digest analyst Ed Barton told GameBizBlog that the Wii sales downturn is mostly due to the lack of staying power exhibited by Animal Crossing: City Folk and Wii Music.

Barton says that the continued success of Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii only back up his claim. "These are older games that obviously have shown tremendous stamina, but Nintendo always needs to bring out new ways to drive console sales forward, and we just didn't see that with Wii Music and City Folk." Even though both titles sold decently enough (Animal Crossing was one of the region's top 10 selling games in 2008 and Wii Music debuted with 92,000 units sold in its first week), they lacked the necessary sales stamina of Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii.

He says that there isn't much hope on the horizon either, despite the imminent release of Monster Hunter 3 on Wii. He warns that trying to transfer the user base from handheld to home console is risky and that the gamble may not pay off for Nintendo. Barton is of the mind that "it won't have the same level of success that it had on the PSP."

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/04/16/analyst-poor-wii-music-animal-crossing-sales-stamina-to-blame-for-downt/

[paul3100]

Well being a wii owner with 50+ games ....

70% of wii games are kids (12-) eg dogzzz/catzzz and so on , the other 20+ is remakes of wii sport (basically) and the last 10%- is the only decent games and i have noticed that the (so called good games) have graphics dating back to windows games or 2000/2004.

So who can blame people for getting sick of a novel idea such as the wii, so it offers a new way to controll your games and 1 or 2 other novel ideas but we all know what happens to novelties RIGHT?

So in the begining there was the wii which was all great and that but reality strikes to thw wii owner that apart from novel controlls the actual wii is total CR*P when it comes to any seriouse gaming and graphics!

Ad yes its all very well Nintendo saying its not the graphics that count but a good game but thats total P*SH , these days we expect both and a whole lot more and the wii just doesn't deliver.

paul