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Nintendo talks Wii Vs. Wii U marketing, price drops, preparing for Microsoft/Sony

by rawmeatcowboy
15 November 2012
GN Version 4.0
A portion of a GamesIndustry interview with Nintendo's Scott Moffitt...

Q: In terms of marketing, do you have any comparison? Wii became a phenomenon unto itself, and it became viral - everyone was talking about it. That may not happen with Wii U. Are you increasing the marketing spend at Nintendo of America to increase awareness and buzz around Wii U?

Scott Moffitt: I think the core of your question is, “Will we capture the same kind of cultural phenomenon as we did with the Wii?” So let me address that first. The world is obviously a different place than it was when Wii launched. There were no social networks. This was before the advent of tablets and smartphone penetration was much smaller. So the landscape has certainly changed. But by the same notion, Wii U is also quite different from Wii.

Wii was successful because, at its basic, fundamental level, it allowed people to have fun together gaming in ways they had not been able to do before. From that standpoint, Wii U we think is similar but maybe can do that even better. Wii U offers a step forward and a revolution in the world of gaming in that it offers, for the first time [on consoles], a second screen gaming experience and that allows you to do a lot of different things. In the world of gaming, it allows for different forms of gaming and a new, more immersive form of gaming. In the social universe, it allows for experiences like Miiverse, which is going to be a unique social community for gamers to post and share and interact across time and across space that they've never been able to before. Third, the GamePad controller and the second screen experience allows people to experience things like Nintendo TVii to enhance their TV viewing and their broader entertainment world.

And all those things mean that Wii U is quite different from Wii, and so I can't predict it will have the same explosive cultural phenomenon that Wii did but we are trying to do the same thing in that we are giving people another new proposal in an innovative way to play games. If that resonates, then we could see a duplication of what happened.

Q: Analysts we speak to seem to think that Wii U will sell out this holiday but that in early 2013, price will become a problem as Xbox 360 and PS3 come down again. Is Nintendo prepared to drop price as they did with 3DS?

Scott Moffitt: We set the price or establish the price and the configurations for Wii U to be accessible and to provide great value to the mainstream gaming market. It would be premature to talk about any kind of a change in that approach. We've priced it where we believe we can command a fair profit for our efforts and any kind of technology that's embedded in them, but also where we can make it accessible for a large number of consumers to get them and enjoy them. So I think it would be very premature to talk about any kind of change to that. All I can say is that the response has been phenomenal and we're getting, especially in the higher priced deluxe set, that one's selling out incredibly quickly. That seems to indicate that the pricing's in a good spot and the proof is in the consumer response.

Full interview here