“The market is now waiting for a new home console”- Iwata

Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata feels that with 95 million units sold, the Wii has now peaked in its worldwide sales, and that the market is ready for a new home console. That’d be the Wii U, which Nintendo says is releasing by this year’s end.

“I think that the market is now waiting for a new proposal for home consoles,” Iwata said, speaking to investors in the firm’s third quarter financial briefing. “Along with effects from our trade marketing activities in December which mainly focused on the Nintendo 3DS, we were not able to sell the Wii as well as we usually do.

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However, not just the Wii, but the overall performance of home consoles in December was lower than the previous year.

“Usually, the Wii enjoys high sales in December, but last year, even though The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was highly acclaimed, we were not able to expand it sufficiently to our target audience, and although the Wii was the platform which sold the most software in December, we were not able to propose new Nintendo titles to our broad audience.

“In Europe, it resulted that out of the home consoles, the Wii sold the most in December; however, we can see that the beginning of the year-end sales was slower and the peak was lower compared to that of the previous year.”

Nintendo recently announced their new online service and gave some details, and it looks pretty awesome.

Nintendo might rename the Wii U prior to this E3, but that’s just a rumour (so far).