Nintendo Says It’s Unfazed By Coming PlayStation Move Launch

SAN FRANCISCO -- Nintendo of America said at the Game Developers Conference that it isn’t overly concerned about Sony Computer Entertainment’s fall launch of the PlayStation Move motion control system that SCE America said will be akin to a new platform debut. Nintendo also still has no plans for an HD console or stereoscopic 3D, Cammie Dunaway, NOA executive vice president of sales and marketing, told Consumer Electronics Daily. Wii hardware supplies, meanwhile, are still not matching demand despite improving this month, she said.

"We're already on our next-generation of motion” with the game Wii Sports Resort and the MotionPlus accessory for Wii remotes that added “a whole new level of precision” to controlling games on the Wii, said Dunaway. SCE, a day earlier at GDC, played up the “fast” and “precise” capability of the Move motion controller (CED March 12 p2). Asked if she thought PlayStation Move was just a “me-too” product, Dunaway said, it “feels a little we too."

"Motion is central to everything that we're doing,” said Dunaway. “We now have Wiis in 27 million homes” in the U.S., “and with that Wii Sports in 27 million homes, which makes it the most-played game ever in the history of the industry,” she said. NPD sales data for February, released after the interview, however, showed that Wii’s installed base grew to more than 28 million. NOA sold more than 4 million copies of Wii Sports Resort to date in the U.S. “Our installed base of MotionPlus is close to 10 million now” in the U.S., including standalone units and those that came part of game bundles, she said. Nintendo of America shipped MotionPlus bundles with pink and blue remotes March 14, and the “response has been really, really strong,” she said.

Of stereoscopic 3D, Dunaway said wearing 3D glasses “just doesn’t seem like a great experience to me. … I certainly don’t think you'll see us asking people to put glasses on their face” to play games. It’s “a very small space for now,” and “certainly not something that we're focused on,” she said. Of HD, she said, “What we've seen and proven with the Wii is that it’s not about the graphics; it’s about the experience that people get playing the games -- that’s how we got to the largest installed base on the fastest pace in the history of the industry,” she said.

"It was an unprecedented holiday for us” for Wii sales, Dunaway said, saying the company sold 3.8 million consoles in December in the U.S., after slashing its price by $50 to $199.99 in September. “That was an all-time industry record for most hardware units ever sold in any month, so that left us in a difficult supply situation in January and February,” Dunaway said. Prior to the holiday season, the Wii had been available in adequate supplies for a while after being in short supply for about two years after the console’s November 2006 launch. The console is now “in stock at only about 25 percent of retail outlets, which has really been a function of this continued unprecedented demand,” she said. Supplies are “getting better in March and you'll start to see some retail ads again for Wii,” but the console is selling as soon as it arrives at stores, she said. “Maybe the consumers are going to continue to have to look around” to find a Wii “over the next few months,” she said. “It’s definitely better as we're going into March” than it was “in January and February, but it’s still not at the level that we'd like it to be,” she said.

The Wii’s U.S. installed base continued to far outpace the PS3 and 360 in February, NPD’s latest sales data showed. But the Xbox 360 was the month’s best-selling home console, moving about 422,000 units, versus about 397,900 Wiis and about 360,100 PS3s. Microsoft started shipping a Final Fantasy XIII Special Edition bundle including a 250-GB console, two wireless controllers and a copy of the latest Square Enix Final Fantasy game at $399, Microsoft said. More Wiis and PS3s would likely have been sold in February if not for the supply problems on those two systems. The DS, however, was the month’s best-selling game system overall, moving about 613,200 units. NOA and NPD didn’t specify how many of the DS systems sold were the DSi or DS Lite. But an industry source who receives more complete NPD data than reporters told us Friday that about 337,000 of the units sold were the DSi. Lagging far behind was the PSP, with about 133,400 sold -- not much better than sales of the legacy PS2, which moved about 101,900 units. NOA boasted that 1.9 million Nintendo hardware systems had been sold in 2010 in the U.S. through February despite the Wii shortage.

NOA is “gearing up” for the March 28 launch of the $189.99 DSi XL handheld system, a larger version of its DSi with dual screens larger than its predecessor, and “hopes to have enough for everyone who wants one,” Dunaway also said. The new device already shipped late last year in Japan as the DSi LL. “We do think it will be quite popular,” but the company will continue to field the DSi and DS Lite, she said. The company is “absolutely confident with the pricing” of the $129.99 DS Lite and $169.99 DSi, she told us. “We sold 11.2 million units of DS” devices combined in 2009 in the U.S., “which was a record,” she said. DSi sales also “outsold PS3 and Xbox 360” last year in the U.S. “even though we were only in the market” with that device “for eight months of the year,” she said.

The Nintendo games America’s Test Kitchen: Let’s Get Cooking and WarioWare: D.I.Y. will ship for the DS devices March 28 also, at $19.99 and $34.99. The XL will come with a standard stylus that clips onto the hardware, as well as a longer one that looks more like a pen. The company hasn’t announced specifics about the DSi XL marketing campaign, but Dunaway said the releases of Test Kitchen and D.I.Y. are “really key toward positioning” the XL “for a broad audience.”

The coming Nintendo DSiWare downloadable game Photo Dojo "utilizes the full capabilities of the DSi,” and will ship in spring or summer, Dunaway said. The response from developers has “been extremely enthusiastic” to the digital DSiWare and WiiWare services, she said. There are now 189 WiiWare titles available and about 127 DSiWare. Several new downloadable games were spotlighted at Nintendo’s GDC booth. Many of the digital titles are from “true independent developers” without large budgets, Dunaway said. They're often from “a couple of guys with a dream and thinking about games that are really innovative, but probably couldn’t have come to the market as packaged retail product because sometimes they're fairly small games,” or they're “games that might be very niche” with “tremendous appeal to a certain segment of the market, but wouldn’t necessarily have the turns to have a slot at Wal-Mart,” she said.

A frequent complaint about the Wii is that Nintendo’s own first-party games tend to be the only ones that sell especially well. But Dunaway said, “The perception and the facts don’t really line up. If you look at December NPD results, four of the top 10 titles were third-party titles for Wii, and to date there have been 10 titles for Wii from third parties that have sold over a million units -- and that’s just here in the U.S. Developers who are really creating innovative experiences that take full advantage of the Wii’s unique capabilities are having success. And Nintendo is absolutely committed to the success” of third-party games for the Wii,” she said.

One coming third-party game that Nintendo is “particularly excited about” is Capcom’s $49.99 Monster Hunter Tri, shipping April 20 for the Wii, Dunaway said. Nintendo is “partnering very, very closely with Capcom on marketing of this title,” she said. That initiative includes a Nintendo points card that’s been using for pre-sales at GameStop to order the game, she said. It’s also being bundled with Nintendo’s new Black Classic Controller Pro at $59.99, and the game takes advantage of Nintendo’s Wii Speak microphone peripheral. NOA is “really trying to collaborate on marketing this particular title in a way that will find its biggest audience possible,” Dunaway said. The coming release of Square Enix’s Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies for the DS in the U.S. this summer is another example of a Nintendo effort to help promote third-party game sales, she said, noting that NOA is publishing the title in this market. Square Enix already released the game in Japan.

EA Sports Active is an example of one third-party Wii game that has sold well in the U.S. Dunaway indicated Nintendo was unfazed by EA widening the audience of that franchise by offering Active 2.0 for the PS3, iPhone and iPod Touch (CED March 11 p4). Sixty-nine percent of the people who live in Wii U.S. households play games on the Wii, “which is much larger than the percentage for folks on the PS3 or the Xbox 360,” she said. Also, “49 percent of primary Wii players are female,” she said. That helps explain why the initial Active game sold so well, she said.

Dunaway also indicated that Nintendo wasn’t overly concerned about the growth of games on the iPhone and other smartphones. “Despite the fact that for years now people have been foretelling the demise of Nintendo’s handheld platforms due to smartphones, it just hasn’t happened. Last year was a record-setting year for us” on the DS, she said. Nintendo’s strong base of game franchises including Mario and Zelda “will enable us to continue to have real strengths” in the handheld arena, she predicted.