Is Wii interest dropping in Japan?

It looks to me from that graph like Wii week-on-week sales simply have a much bigger standard deviation than PS3. Wii's sales hit all kinds of spikes and valleys, probably corresponding to the erratic pacing of major releases and major gift-giving seasons. PS3's sales, by contrast, are low but rather steady. Wii hit a similar trough in week 10, which was followed by a peak just a few weeks later. I wouldn't be predicting anything from this graph unless you get a good, solid 6-8 weeks of relatively low sales.
 
All the people that want one have got one ;)

At the end of the day it is a niche machine that caught everyone's attention, but after you've enjoyed Wii Sports what else is there to do. There doesn't seem to be much more they can do other than invent more controllers to try and change things up.

Dear god you just cannot be serious, surely? You actually believe that:

A: No other game can possibly do the kind of things Wii Sports is doing better then Wii Sports.
B: No developer can make a different game utilising the controller in other new ways.
C: Developers can't use the controller to make plenty of traditional games better.
D: The controller can't be used to play just about any game just as well as a standard controller.

:nope:
 
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It looks to me from that graph like Wii week-on-week sales simply have a much bigger standard deviation than PS3. Wii's sales hit all kinds of spikes and valleys, probably corresponding to the erratic pacing of major releases and major gift-giving seasons. PS3's sales, by contrast, are low but rather steady. Wii hit a similar trough in week 10, which was followed by a peak just a few weeks later. I wouldn't be predicting anything from this graph unless you get a good, solid 6-8 weeks of relatively low sales.

Week to week spikes could also be availability. I'm not sure if they ship equal amounts to retailers week to week.
 
It's likely that some systems were diverted to the US for Prime and such.

I doubt the Wii's interest is dying quite yet.
 
For the DS fanbase, a shift to the Wii is natural progression. Their Nintendo like games will clearly follow over as they will. Thus I don't see the Wii fading away into nothing as many have predicted.

For the hardcore gamers, the Wii seems to be a secondary console for parties and gatherings. Either way, it sells :)
 
I don't think it will be a fad, I just believe that it will have the shortest life compare to PS3.

Why does it need to have as long a span as the PS3? By the time/if the PS3 starts coming into it's own, Nintendo will have already made a crap load of money and sit on a big chunk of the marketshare. The market doesn't wait.
 
Why does it need to have as long a span as the PS3? By the time/if the PS3 starts coming into it's own, Nintendo will have already made a crap load of money and sit on a big chunk of the marketshare. The market doesn't wait.
As a meta-arguement to your meta-arguement...:-

Why does it matter whether nintendo make a ton of cash?

If they ARE in actually selling to a [largely] completely new demographic of non-gamers and casuals then it's highly questionable whether nintendo's efforts will take away from Sony or M$s..

I'm sure many individuals here pretty much agree that owning a Wii is probably not going to be sufficient enough to prevent the average hardcore gamer from purchasing a PS3/360 when the price has come down and the game libraries are large enough..

So it could be like this..:-

Nintendo's old market share (GC) = a
Sony's old market share (PS2) = b
Nintendo's new market share (Wii) = c
Sony's new market share (PS3) = d

b >>> a
c > d

but

c+d >>> b+a

&

c <= a + (c+d) - (b+a)
 
Why does it need to have as long a span as the PS3? By the time/if the PS3 starts coming into it's own, Nintendo will have already made a crap load of money and sit on a big chunk of the marketshare. The market doesn't wait.

Very true, the Wii does not need to have as long a span as the PS3 and the market does not wait.

However, it can be discussed if they are competing for the same market share as it is now.
I think Nintendo focused on a market that MS and Sony ignored, people that do not crave HD gaming but are appealed by an innovative control interface and prefer a cheap price. There will still be a market for HD games and that marketshare will grow with the number of HDTVs and in pace with the price of the HD consoles going down.

But nothing would stop Nintendo to introduce a HD console by the time PS3 and 360 starts to overtake the Wii in number of sales. I do hope Nintendo put a lot of the money they earn into hardware development this time around.

Edit: arch was faster than me. :)
 
Wii hasn't had a blockbuster this year, until MP3.

Smash Bros is going to do some devious things to Sony's ratio.
 
However, it can be discussed if they are competing for the same market share as it is now.

Or, it could be that they aren't competing for the same market. That all they have accomplished is to acquire the same core group of Nintendo fans more quickly than the past.

That is a finite group and the adoption rate slowing down is a reflection of that.
 
I doubt they only have the core group as they already sold about as much Wii's in Japan as they did GC's in 5 years and I dont think suddenly every GC owner bought a Wii in 9 months.

I think its probably more normale/hardcore gamers, nintendo fans and a bunch of ''non gamers''.
 
Which Nintendo core group, the 4 million who bought the Gamecube or the over 19 million (soon to zoom pass the 20 million PS2) who bought the DS? Let's see, who would be better at taking advantage of the transition from the over 19 million "touch generation" DS players to the home console. humm...
 
That is a finite group and the adoption rate slowing down is a reflection of that.
Although the sales aren't showing a slowdown in that sense. What they show is the reduction of a 4 month old peak. Sales haven't dropped below there lowest ever levels yet, let alone maintained that, and certainly not a decline past that. There's nothing in these numbers to suggest Wii interest is on the whole different that previous interest.
 
Yep, if anything I expect to see new high peaks in sales when Super Mario Galaxy comes out if the supply is there (Nintendo has been pretty good at ensuring supply has been there for both Mario Party and DQ: Swords). BTW, SquareEnix's undershipment for DQ: Swords apparently killed sales on the game due to the flourishing used game market there. Oh and Smash Brothers is going to really boost sales if the supply is there. Apparently in Japan, Super Smash Brothers: Melee used still sells for only the equivalent of $5 less than the game new.

I wish NPD did release weekly sales so we could see if consoles sales correlate as highly with game releases in the US as they do in Japan (current belief is there isn't as high of a corollary based on percent of console sales from the previous year don't seem to change much from month to month based on games being released).
 
Definitely not all..

But that's going off topic..

Like I said. just about any game.

I can only think of one or two isolated examples of games that might not be able to play as well on Wii's controller, side on fighting games and Football games (soccer ot the yanks) and I'm open to being proven wrong on them.

Also we've already seen some traditional games that play even better with it so its just a case of "you can't have everything"..
 
So whats going on at nintendo? DS dropped like 60k from normal? and Wii has gone down quite a bit again. Are they having production problems or are they just saving up for christmas when a bunch of big games hit the market? Especially Japan which will get Wii fit this year will probably be total carnage.
 
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