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UK - Wii sales drop 45.1% year-on-year, lack of Wii 2 hurting Nintendo, says Pachter

by rawmeatcowboy
06 May 2010
GN Version 3.1

THE MARKET DROP IN FIGURES

Hardware unit sales trends

2009 vs 2008
PS2: -65.8%
PS3: +5.8%
WII: -36.5%
XBOX 360: -10.5%
DS (all models): -25.7%
PSP (all models): -25.6

Year to date ending March 31st 2010

PS2: -94.9%
PS3: -5.1%
WII: -45.1
XBOX 360: -22.2%
DS (all models): -35.9%
PSP (all models): -44.7%

“That decline is a serious problem for their profitability and suggests that the Wii audience is just not buying software. 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 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. If Nintendo introduces a Wii 2 that is similar in processing power to the PS3 or 360, there would be far more games made for all three platforms, and Nintendo would see attach rates and royalties rise, driving profits higher. With all that said, I think that the company intends to remain complacent about its hardware leadership position, and expect it to wait too long to introduce another console. It’s too bad, as I think that the right business decision is to launch a Wii HD this year, but they appear to disagree with me.” - Wedbush analyst, Michael Pachter

Sometimes Pachter is right on the money, and other times he’s a bit off the mark. I think his whole Wii 2/HD thing doesn’t make much sense. It would certainly boost sales a bit, but would more developers pour bigger amounts of time into creating games for a Wii that features the same controls, but better graphics?

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