Strong Game Lineup to Lift Wii U This Holiday Season, Nintendo Says
LOS ANGELES -- Nintendo is comfortable with the current Wii U pricing and there’s “nothing to announce” about any price cut at this time, Nintendo of America (NOA) spokesman Charlie Scibetta told us at E3 Thursday. It feels the strong game lineup that it highlighted at the show (CED June 12 p8) will give the console a major sales lift, he said.
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NOA continues to field a Basic Set of the Wii U at $299.99 with a white 8-GB console and a Deluxe Set at $349.99 with a black 32-GB console. The latter SKU is $50 less than the PS4 will cost when it ships this holiday season and $150 less than the Xbox One when it ships in November.
"We believe there’s a lot of value” with what consumers are getting with the Deluxe version that comes bundled with the game Nintendo Land, said Scibetta. The title costs $59.99 when bought separately. “We think the price is right” for Wii U hardware, he said, declining to speculate on how PS4 and Xbox One pricing may impact Wii U sales.
"It would be better” if there were a price cut on the Wii U now, Laurent Detoc, president of third-party publisher Ubisoft, told us. But his company continues to support the console, he said, and it spotlighted seven coming titles for the Nintendo console at E3. Detoc would have liked to see some of the strong Nintendo-published Wii U games released earlier so “they would not be in the predicament” they are in, as Nintendo goes head-to-head with the PS4 and Xbox One this holiday season, he said. “I hope that the first-party software” that Nintendo will release “drives more people to consider” the Wii U, he said. “I would have preferred for the Wii U to be more successful” than it has been, he said. But it’s a “great platform and we should be making games for it,” he said. Nintendo is also “a company that is not going anywhere” because it has “fabulous franchises” and “great expertise in this industry,” he said, despite naysayers who continue to write off the company.
Nintendo’s strong back-half game lineup “might pick up” sales of the Wii U, said Hiro Maekawa, CEO of third-party publisher Natsume. If that doesn’t work, Nintendo may drop the console’s pricing, he said, but predicted there won’t be a price cut this holiday season. Natsume is “still waiting to see” if the Wii U gets a significant installed base before it decides to make games for it, he said.
NOA is continuing to field both Wii U SKUs despite recent published reports to the contrary, said Scibetta. It is, however, working with retailers to “rebalance” supplies of each SKU to better match demand, he said. Supplies of both SKUs, as well as the 3DS handheld system, are ample now, he said.
The delay of Nintendo’s software title Wii Fit U from spring or summer until December was decided on to boost its quality, said Scibetta. “We had several” titles, including that one and Pikmin 3, that were originally planned to be launch titles or released in the first half of 2013, but were pushed back until the back half of this year, he said. “We wanted to enhance the quality” of the titles, he said. “The downside of that is that we haven’t had the steady drumbeat” of software titles in the first half of the year that “we would have liked, and that’s impacted” sales of the Wii U, he said. The strong lineup of coming games this holiday season and in 2014 should “increase the momentum” for the console, he said. Pikmin 3 will be released in August. Wii Fit U is still in development, but will be ready for the holiday season, said Scibetta. It uses the same Balance Board that the Wii Fit titles used, he said.
The company was pleased with sales of the 3DS title Animal Crossing: New Leaf since its release last week, said Scibetta. Sales of 3DS hardware grew since the title’s release, he said. “It’s off to a really good start” in the U.S. after finding strong success in Japan, he said of the game. Total 3DS software sales were up 20 percent through May compared to the same period last year in the U.S., with first-party 3DS software sales up more than 50 percent, he said, citing NPD data.
Nintendo will be “exploring” the free-to-play market, but not with one of its major intellectual properties, Scibetta also said at E3. In other words, don’t expect the company to make a Mario game available for free, he said.
The company also continues to seem undaunted by the popularity of mobile gaming. “We think the overall pie is growing as opposed to shrinking” for Nintendo in the game market, said Scibetta. “Just because more people are gaming on tablets and smartphones does not mean that our sales are going down,” he said. Nintendo handheld game sales are “bigger now” than they were before the advent of smartphones and tablets, he said.
The company was “really happy” with its E3 strategy for 2013, said Scibetta. Instead of holding one large media briefing like it usually does, and like Microsoft and Sony did last week, Nintendo opted to make announcements during a Nintendo Direct webcast that was then followed by a game software showcase for reporters and a meeting with analysts and business partners. The company wanted to squarely focus on games last week, said Scibetta. It remains to be seen what Nintendo’s E3 strategy will be next year. The company will “evaluate” how it went “once the dust has settled and see what the reaction” was to it, he said.