Analyst: Poor Wii Music, Animal Crossing sales stamina to blame for downturn

by David Hinkle on Apr 16th 2009 1:00PM

Wii sales have been the lowest they've ever been in Japan. Is the Japanese public losing interest? Screen Digest analyst Ed Barton told GameBizBlog that the Wii sales downturn is mostly due to the lack of staying power exhibited by Animal Crossing: City Folk and Wii Music.

Barton says that the continued success of Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii only back up his claim. "These are older games that obviously have shown tremendous stamina, but Nintendo always needs to bring out new ways to drive console sales forward, and we just didn't see that with Wii Music and City Folk." Even though both titles sold decently enough (Animal Crossing was one of the region's top 10 selling games in 2008 and Wii Music debuted with 92,000 units sold in its first week), they lacked the necessary sales stamina of Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii.

He says that there isn't much hope on the horizon either, despite the imminent release of Monster Hunter 3 on Wii. He warns that trying to transfer the user base from handheld to home console is risky and that the gamble may not pay off for Nintendo. Barton is of the mind that "it won't have the same level of success that it had on the PSP."

Source

Tags: animal-crossing, animal-crossing-city-folk, Animal-Crossing-MMO, Animal-Crossing-Wii, japan, mario-kart-wii, monster-hunter, monster-hunter-g, Nintendo, Nintendo-EAD, Wii, wii-music

Reader Comments (69)

The dinosaurs are out in force here, as suspected

Please the Wii never had staying power. Do you think any game company is in with Nintendo for the long run? The only thing that is keeping Nintendo afloat is the titles that they keep milking to death and Wii-Fit. Everything else that Nintendo craps out either is mediocre or just plain sucks. This is probably why Wii is just getting lower and lower on the charts and even the PS3 is beating it. I have seen most of what Nintendo has planned for this year. It's nothing to get excited about. Maybe the only reason Nintendo is still doing so well in America is that the Japanese have finally seen Nintendo for what it really is and people like you guys who blank me out every time I say anything negative about the Wii are still deluded and can't see what is right in front of you. Feel free to blank me out again, it won't stop what i say from being true.

This has nothing to do with an economic downturn, this has everything to do with the quality of these titles.

It's funny because the analyst even stated that titles like Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii continued to sell well... which further illistrates this point that it has nothing to do with economic downturn, because these two titles added something new and fresh (though an arguement could me made against Mario Karts added freshness, I would disagree with the arguement because I felt they did a great job adding new stuff to the franchise.)

As for the other two titles:
Animal Crossing was good, but there wasn't enough "freshness" in the title for people to justify the purchase, since they've probably already bought Animal Crossing for Gamecube and then Animal Crossing for DS.

Wii Music, I've never played, and probably won't. There is nothing about it that appeals to me as a fan of music games and a fan of Nintendo's titles. The commercials showed nothing "fun" and from what I've heard of gameplay and seen at various press conferences, it just looked boring (with an equally dull tracklist - it should have been filled with more "Nintendo" music and less "kindergarten" music).

"Wii Music, I've never played, and probably won't. There is nothing about it that appeals to me as a fan of music games and a fan of Nintendo's titles. The commercials showed nothing "fun" and from what I've heard of gameplay and seen at various press conferences, it just looked boring (with an equally dull tracklist - it should have been filled with more "Nintendo" music and less "kindergarten" music)."

Only thing valid about that are the commercials and the small tracklist.
Commercials were awful, most videos about WiiMusic everywhere were awful.
And the tracklist definitely could've used s'mmore.
...but then if it just went with more Nintendo music, the casual crowd would be turned away from it.
However, if it had actual more songs from different artists, it definitely would've been more awesome.

Problem is with most reviews for Wii Music is that most reviewers judged it before they even got the game. And the isntant they played with it, they hardly tried to master the darn thing.
The game's tougher than looks and it's hardly a pick-up-and-play game. It actually takes a lot of practice before you even get near being good at the darn thing.
But once you get to the point of goodness, it's fun as hell to trying different takes on songs. :)

Ain't gonna' tell ya' to get the game, just tellin' ya to consider that most of the reviews were already doomed to get a low rating before it even released.

Pretty sure all console/software sales are hurting in Japan. And as someone else said, DS/PSP are dominating over there. That said, there are plenty of decent wii titles to look forward too. Excitebots, Punch-Out, Boom Blox 2, Sin and Punishment 2, The Conduit, Murasama, No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, RE: Darkside Chronicles/Dead Space: Extraction, Cursed Mountain, Sadness, Let's Tap.. plus whatever (if anything) they choose to announce at E3.

Maybe we'll at least find out what "secret procjets" Factor5 and Retro are working on

My mistake, I mis-read the article, upon review of it, I notice he was refering to the actual Wii system sales and not the preformance of the individual titles.

My Bad, ignore my first comment... :)

Well Japans taste in games is vastly different from North America, AND they are a much more mobile culture then NA as well.

Yet, this is Nintendos fault. Japanese games that sell well are story oriented, RPGs and grindy.

None of the games Nintendo is releasing are any of this. Their games appeal more to NA markets and some European. They need to step it up and release the games they know that'll sell, like Kid Icarus, more Zelda and Marios, Pilot Wings, All the stuff they're releasing few and far between.

Course that's for the Japanese market.. In NA we apparently don't need games like Fatal Frame or like.

I think this has partly to do with the fact the whole of the Japanese gaming market seems to be going down. Every time I see the numbers they release they seem to be heading down. Although lack of good games is a big part of it, it is also part of a larger and more disturbing trend.

I think the poor performance of the titles adds insult to the injury of the 'New Play Mechanic!' re-releases of mario tennis etc. I mean, If nintendo had just invested a little time and effort to make proper ports (im talking ports ffs) then they could have easily had another couple of Mario Kart Wii's on their hands, which was hardly a quantum leap from every other title in the series. Fans were clamouring for a new pikmin title since launch, how hard would it have been to cash convert that loyalty? Mario Tennis would sell like crack-cakes with a dollop of online play and perhaps some wiimotionplus support.

It cant be that they don't have enough money to invest in these titles, so we have to put it down to a lazy NPD team, who thought *Music would be another *sports, *play or *fit, and thought 'fuck it, my eggs are plenty safe in that basket'.

Someone should be getting f'kin fired.

New Play Control is merely filler between the bigger games. They are converting that cash to loyalty, but maybe, just maybe, new games take longer to make than old ones.

Maybe. I could be totally crazy, or something.

Yeah, and Wii Music/Animal crossing are new games, so if they'd properly developed the 'New Play....' titles rather than hedging their bests on these turkeys, then they couldn't be accused of accelerating the downturn with poor software, cos they'd be making, y'know, good software.

Or I could be totally crazy or something?

I haven't touched the wii in a while. Bought an xbox instead recently.

I mean, wii music and animal crossing is what they offered me this year. I feel like they shrugged off people's concerns when they only announced these games, and this is the result.

Actually, neither game sold poorly. Both are approaching 3 millions units sold. Not many games do that.

Wii Music's whole problem was a lack of simplicity. Not simplicity in play mechanics, but simplicity in terms of users being able to understand what they're getting. Wii Sports, Wii Fit, all very straightforward. You could explain their functions in a sentence. Wii Music tried to bridge the concepts of creativity and simplicity and probably just confused potential customers

But ultimately the problem in question here is that the evergreen effect simply doesn't have the hold in Japan that it does in other territories. It's a much more volatile market, relying on software. Fortunately, Wii is getting what Japan wants, due to its strength in the region. But i would say Wii's primary competitor for attention is PSP, a battle it will most likely lose in the long run.

You second paragraph makes little sense to me. Could you please try again, this time with language?

I'm not going to cry for Nintendo as they've made oodles of cash off of the Wii. They don't need to sell software at all at this point to stay in business, though I'm sure Wii Sports Resort will sell buttloads.

I do think however, that the Wii is taking the backseat to the iPhone in terms of consumer awareness/interest. That's what happens when you court the fickle mass market.

Poor games with poor sales? SHOCKING.

I'd say they're right on the money, as I own Wii Fit and Mario Kart and have absolutely zero interest in Animal Crossing or Wii Music. I'd rather not bring up anecdotal evidence, but from what I've seen, these games seem to appeal only to a very specific group of people.

While Wii Fit can get people interested in fitness by doing some simple exercises that are at least somewhat effective, Wii Music fails in representing musical instruments. The abysmal track list does not help its effort, either.

maybe city folk would of sold better if nintendo didnt take 3 years to make the same thing again.. i mean i have it and still like it but even the job in the beginning is the SAME EXACT THING only thing different is the city which gets pretty boring

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Analyst: Poor Wii Music, Animal Crossing sales stamina to blame for downturn

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