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Wii 'Popularity Bubble' to Burst?
A combination of industry and developer observations has prompted Tech.co.uk to wonder if the Wii's overwhelming popularity is due to end sometime soon. This is based on a report from Japanese business newspaper The Nikkei, which published an article recently entitled 'Software Houses Miscalculate Audience, Demand For Wii'. "The report goes on to discuss the likelihood that many Wiis are gathering dust in owners' cupboards, citing one software house president as saying, 'People bought it out of curiosity, and it's likely a lot of them haven't used it.' Given that September saw Wii sales fall sharply in Japan for the second consecutive month, it seems reasonable to speculate that the bubble inflated by the novelty factor is starting to deflate, but writing Nintendo off at any stage is a perilous course to steer." Is this just worrying, or is there validity to this?
Wii is being shut out. It's exceeded the sales of Xbox 360 (just before halo hit) with Xbox having a 1 year head start!!!! But AAA titles are few... heck even introductory games like Smash Bros. and Mario Galaxy STILL aren't out yet. Part of the issue is that developers don't want to admit they didn't even bother to START games, so now they want to say sales of Wiis are "down" so they stop getting nagged.
I haven't seen many games for Wii that a casual gamer would die for.. Mario Party was a good one to have, but what else past Wii play? They all scream "rental" rather than buy. Nintendo needs to do more with interaction as well. Where's the DS/Wii interactive games? There's 1 or 2 but come on. Nintendo needs to lower the bar for games on Wii/DS in a big hurry. They need to move to small downloadable content via Wii Points or something... perhaps sync downloadable DS games (with a special cart) via Wii like iPods. They could put larger games on SD cards as they are already keyed to your Wii they can't go anywhere online. They need to get more casual games QUICKLY. I've got one and only bothered to rent half a dozen games so far... that's not good. Where's games like Pikmin 3 or Katamari? Or DDR or Guitar Hero? Those are low overhead games aimed at the target Wii demographic but no where to be seen.