RSSNintendo Expects to Meet Wii Goals
By Ed Oswald | Published November 29, 2006, 5:06 PM
Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime painted a rosy picture for the Wii Wednesday, saying it should easily meet its target of shipping four million consoles worldwide by years end.
Fils-Aime said there was some opportunity for Wii shipments to end up coming above company estimates, but that would be limited by manufacturing. He gave no indication of how many more consoles could be potentially produced above the four million currently projected, but called such a prospect "challenging."
"We will sell everything we make so now it's simply a manufacturing thing," Reuters quoted him as saying at the news service's Media Summit in New York.
This came one day after Nintendo revealed that it had sold some 600,000 Wiis in the first eight days of launch, including nearly 500,000 copies of its latest Legend of Zelda title, Twilight Princess. So far, the Wii launch has generated $190 million in revenue for the company.
Some analysts believe that the low price point of the Wii, combined with the amount of buzz it has received and the unique gameplay, could make the console the sleeper hit of the holiday season.
"Having put the final version through its paces over the last few days has brought back a lot of what I like about video games, it's really fun," JupiterResearch senior analyst Michael Gartenberg said of the console at its launch.
Add to this Sony's struggles to produce PS3 consoles, and Nintendo will likely be a solid second to the Xbox 360 in terms of market share.
The 2 times I have seen it, I was rather amused by their commercial where the Sensei advises the player to "get the gun" after watching him totally embarass himself with the sword while using the motion sensitive control unit. And the Sensei's final admonishment of the player with a totally disgusted "You suck!" was actually quite cute.
With their price point relative to the other absurdly priced units targeted firmly at the average family, this ad gives me reason to think that Nintendo is on the road to doing pretty well in this niche.
Its nice to see a company actually seem to grasp just what market niche they are targeting and to aggressively pursue it.
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|man still can't get my hands on one. I can go on ebay but I don't want to spend like $500 on one when i can wait till the stores get it in and just pay like $300
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|Wonder how many of these are replacements for failed units?
Wii failure rates are SKY high, nearly as bad as initial Xbox360 failure rates (15%-20%).
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|Where are you getting those numbers from?
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|xbox360 failure rates were closer to 3%
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|"Wonder how many of these are replacements for failed units?
Wii failure rates are SKY high, nearly as bad as initial Xbox360 failure rates (15%-20%)."
The little birdy outside your window tell you that?
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|MS will of course never announce official figures.. They say 3-5%, some people say over 30% (which is also false), based on about 90,000 consoles we have sold via retail, our return rate is about 16%
http://biz.gamedaily.com...ustry/feature/?id=13902
http://www.next-gen.biz/...mp;id=3866&Itemid=2
http://www.microsoft-wat..._than_acknowledged.html
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|Good job, i hope Nintendo kicks major butt with this console.
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|You don't really have to jump around anymore than you want to. The Wii mote is sensitive enough to respond to little movements, the big exaggerated movements are not necessary - but fun!
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|Hats off to Nintendo, they did it again. The only problem is lazy slobs like myself don't like to jump around when playing games.
Oh yeah, Nintendo actually makes money with each console sale.
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|"Oh yeah, Nintendo actually makes money with each console sale."
Not hard to do when you price your console about $150 above cost of production...
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|"Not hard to do when you price your console about $150 above cost of production..."
You say that like it's a bad thing. Meanwhile it's still the cheapest console on the market.
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|I don't know how successfull the game cube was, but I only knew 5 people that had a game cube; everyone else has PS2s or Xbox. Nintendo probably couldn't afford to splurge and had to make sure they turn a profit.
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|its called smart engineering and not putting in features their core audience doesnt need and passing that cost along to its customer. What they did pass along is a revolutionary type of gamplay and a fun experience.
Yeah thats a bad idea to sell a console and make money on it from day one. And since its cheap also you can sell lots of accecories and games with it that also make you money. Hmm poor model. They should have engineered it to where it was well below cost and sold it so high people couldnt buy games and accecories that make them money to overcome the cost of the console like sony. Oh and not made it available in quantity to help sell the accecories/games that make the console profitable.
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|This generation everyone I know was talking about getting 2 consoles a xbox360/ps3 and a wii, but they were all getting the wii. Which 2 are more available right now? And nintendo will probably sell 4million units this holiday season compared to what 500k(maybe less) for the ps3 at a loss? They turned a profit from day one and its more so available than other launch systems by 4x or more this year(but still selling out). Smart
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