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Nintendo’s US chief says the $50 price cut for the Wii has given the console a significant sales lift.
Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo president in the US, told the FT in an interview that the price reduction was part of a strategy to boost holiday season sales, coupling it with Sunday’s launch of its Wii Fit Plus title.
“The consumer response has been very strong to the price reduction,” he said, adding that it was too early to release precise sales figures.
Mr Fils-Aime said he did like to check Amazon’s hourly updates of best-selling video game items though, and the Wii and Wii Fit Plus lead the current Top Ten. At number ten is pre-sales for Nintendo’s other tentpole release for the final quarter - New Super Mario Bros, launching on November 15.
“There are literally millions of consumers out there who want a Wii and had been on the sidelines,” he said, explaining the new surge in sales.
“They’d been waiting for that little nudge to go out and pick it up - the price decline, the sampling, the launching of key software like Wii Fit Plus - we believe it’s what’s pushing them over the edge to get into the category.”
By sampling, Mr Fils-Aime was referring to marketing taking place in 70 US markets, getting 1m consumers to try out Nintendo products. He said Nintendo was after the “fence sitters” -the 50m US consumers who said they were interested in video games but did not have a console. The figure was 150m in Nintendo’s markets globally, he added.
Sales of the Wii have lagged this year and titles such as Wii Music and Animal Crossing have disappointed. But the Nintendo chief said that major releases had been kept back to the second half of the year in 2009, with Wii Fit Plus, Wii Sports Resort and Super Mario Bros aimed at the holiday season, while more than 140 new Wii titles were being launched by third-party publishers over the next three months.
The Wii leads sales of current generation consoles with more than 50m units sold. The Japanese company made its first price cut for the Wii since launch when it dropped it to $200 from $250 in the US on September 27. Its price was also cut in Japan by 20 per cent - to Y20,000 - on October 1, and by the same amount in Europe on October 2.
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