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Nintendo Using Added Value to Keep Wii Alive

15.06.2011
Are you one of those "my Wii is gathering dust" types? Well, it's not an invalid thing to say, and there's probably more of you now that the Wii software library has slowed to a trickle, and a trickle of uninteresting crap, at that. If you're Nintendo, you're probably well aware of the situation, but with two newer systems to take care, you can only really find new ways to get new people to buy a Wii; to go back into the years of actually pretty good games. For the Wii's twilight years, that seems to be the plan.

In a Nintendo-organized analyst Q&A session during E3 2011 (), the company's global president Satoru Iwata and Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime fielded questions from analysts on the announcements the company made during E3, not the least of which being the new Wii U system.

One of the early questions in the session deals not only with Nintendo's plans to better reach "all" gamers with the Wii U, but also the situation with the current Wii, and the concern that it doesn't have the pull it once did in 2006 and 2007, further bringing up the possibility that even people who could be new Wii buyers might be waiting for the Wii U, especially since it's backwards-compatible with Wii games and accessories. Iwata countered with the fact that "for any consumer product, different audiences buy a product at different points in time, and there are certain audiences that want to buy a new product when it first comes out, before its reputation becomes solid, because they want to be the first ones to try it."

He's not exactly wrong -- even among hardcore gamers, you can find message board threads where people are just now getting an "old" system and are looking for game recommendations. Fils-Aime added that NOA's recent Mario Kart bundle, with the game and Wii system for $149, along with $20 "Nintendo Selects" titles, can represent a great value. Nintendo is also looking towards their Latin American and other specific regional markets to reach new audiences with Wii advertising, with Fils-Aime calling "the Hispanic consumer" a "key opportunity for us."

But for those who already own a Wii, it's a different story. The drought of brand-new, promising games pretty much spells the end of the road for the system, and no amount of cheap re-releases is going to fill the void. Most gamers are looking to The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword to keep their Wii running later this year, and in Japan, Dragon Quest X is still a Wii game, but by now, these are intermittent blips on the radar.

Pre-existing owners are waiting for the Wii U, at the very least, or trying out games for the Xbox 360 or PS3, both platforms that are just as old as the Wii but have no overt signs of slowing down. However, Nintendo still needs some console presence before the successor arrives, so don't be surprised if you see more Wii bundles or price drops in the next 12-18 months leading up to the launch of the Wii U.