But despite being far ahead of the competition, there's reason to agree with Nintendo's president that the Wii is in an "unhealthy condition" in its home market.
Two years and four months after its launch in the Japanese market, Nintendo's Wii system has crested eight million units sold in its home market. This places it millions of units ahead of its competitors, a triumph given the fact that Nintendo was a distant second in the last era of gaming consoles.
However, revolutions are never a smooth ride. Earlier this month, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata declared that despite leading the pack, his company's console was "in the most unhealthy condition since it hit the Japanese market" and that this was "not the position we wanted to be in more than two years after launch and after selling almost 8 million consoles."
Though the eight million unit sales mark is a significant achievement, Iwata must be watching the weekly sales figures of his console, which have been in the doldrums as of late. For the past several weeks, weekly Wii sales have hovered below the 20,000 unit mark. This is low enough to allow Sony's PlayStation 3 to lead the home console hardware charts in weekly sales, and even Microsoft's anemic Xbox 360 managed to outdo the Wii during one seven-day sales period.
However, Nintendo's sudden slowing could be indicative of shifting business conditions in the company’s console market, which Iwata described as "not very strong right now overall." Rejecting the possibility of a price cut, Iwata claimed that it was key software titles that drove the Wii's growth, probably referring to the same games that Famitsu has recently revealed lead Wii lifetime-to-date unit sales in Japan:
Top Five Wii Games by LTD Sales in Japan
- 1. Wii Sports - 3.5 million units*
- 2. Wii Fit - 3.3 million units
- 3. Wii Play - 2.7 million units
- 4. Mario Kart Wii - 2.2 million units
- 5. Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 1.8 million
*Note: Wii Sports is not packaged with the Wii in Japan, and is sold separately.
With Wii Sports at the top of that list, could Iwata be hoping that titles like upcoming sequel Wii Sports Resort (which has been given a June launch date in Japan) could revitalize sales for the little-console-that-could? And where will Nintendo's major fall 2008 releases, Wii Music and Animal Crossing: City Folk, measure up when their sales data is revealed in Nintendo's upcoming fiscal year report?
One thing's for sure, Nintendo's CEO is talking about the situation as if it's an immediate and pressing challenge. This could, however, be more a show of prudence than defeat. Despite Iwata's statements that suggest doom and gloom, Sony's second-place PlayStation 3 sits at only three million units sold in Japan, a full five million consoles behind Nintendo.