Nintendo looking to keep Wii alive despite launching a new console

By: Muhammad Qasim Hassan

  |   September 25th, 2012   |  

Uncategorized

Despite being all set to launch Wii U within a couple of months, Nintendo has no intention of ending its support for Wii.

During an interview with Forbes, the president of Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aime was clear about his company eyeing the millions of people who still qualified as potential buyers of Wii.

In order to capitalise on the opportunity that still exists in the region, Fils-Aime conceded that Nintendo is clear on how it wants to continue the broad marketing for the console despite its successor arriving in the market.

According to him, there are a lot of consumers who are late adopters and rather than rushing to the market to get their hands on the latest technology on offer, they wait for the prices to come down before making the purchase.

He went on to add that even though Wii U is definitely an improvement on its predecessor, it would definitely cost more. Not everyone is equally willing to spend big money to cater to their gaming needs and therefore rather than going for the next-generation console, a faction of consumers would instead turn to Wii, which is relatively cheaper but has a lot of enjoyable experience to offer.

Getting hands on a console in the late stage of its life cycle has a big advantage of finding the shelves already full of a huge range of games, thus making it easier for the gamers to choose what they want instead of presenting them with a limited option and compelling them to make the purchase before giving them another option a few months or even years later.

Fils-Aime appeared convinced while talking to Forbes that not only is there a huge market for Wii in America, there are millions of potential buyers for the console in the entire region.

Nintendo will indeed face a bit of a challenge to continue the sales of Wii since the consumers not have a variety of alternatives that are equally capable of fulfilling their gaming needs.

However, the president of Nintendo of America is confident about his company doing well in the market with the sales of its Wii console. He acknowledged the success of Sony in marketing both the PlayStation 2 as well as PlayStation 3 console, describing it as phenomenal and hoped to build a similar install base to keep Wii alive for some time.

Prior to the launch of Wii, a handful of industry analysts were of the opinion that the hardware was not nearly as powerful as its competitors and thus was not going to be able to bring desirable results for the company. However, the console managed to do quite well, much to the surprise of those analysts, with a lot of credit going to the exclusive titles.

Whether Nintendo would be able to keep the goose that has been laying golden eggs for the past few years alive or will it finally let it die and completely commit to the Wii U is something that remains to be seen.