Nintendo announces steep Wii sales drop

The moment has finally arrived. Well, that’s what you’d say at first glance when you take a look at the sales numbers which were released by Nintendo this week. They’re expecting an almost 20% drop in console sales this year despite the price-cut from $249 to $199, announced last September.

Nintendo is of course having an increasingly difficult time competing with Sony and Microsofts’ offerings which are looking more and more like an attractive option over Nintendo’s shiny white box.

The big N is hoping for a brighter holiday season, but to be completely honest, we don’t. The flattened-gamecube with waggle controller was originally brought as the biggest revolution in gaming history, but instead turned out to be more comparable to nintendo selling it’s soul and fanbase in return for a purely money-hungry market exploiting company. Nintendo fans, and gamers in general have abandoned Nintendo completely, leaving two platforms with mostly shovel-ware behind to gather dust for your mom and little sis to poke around with.

I can personally only hope for Microsoft and Sony to pick up where Nintendo left off, and as much as I dislike Natal, I think that Sony and Microsoft are going to give Nintendo a run for it’s money when the playstation wiimote and xbox natal hit the shelves.

PS3 selling like hotcakes, outselling Wii, 360 globally

In a long-awaited turn of events at this year’s GamesCom, the company behind Playstation announced it’s new form factor for the Playstation 3, and with it came a new, much cheaper, €299 price tag.

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Gamasutra: Wii Fit Nears 8M US Sales, Wii Play Exceeds 11M

Nintendo’s expanded audience Wii titles are displacing Rockstar North’s PlayStation 2 GTA games as the most ubiquitous video games this decade, according to single-platform U.S. sales data from the NPD Group.

According to data cited by consumer site IGN, Wii Play — which is sold with a second Wii remote controller included — is the single best-selling console SKU since 2000, with more than 11.1 million units sold in the U.S. through August of this year. The game beats out the second-place title, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, by nearly 3 million units.

Also revealed was that the exercise-encouraging Wii Fit is bearing down on San Andreas, with 7.9 million units to the latter’s 8.25 million, having already surpassed Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’s 6.9 million.

And although Wii Fit’s sales are declining, the game still shows up in the top 10 chart each month, and Nintendo sales and marketing EVP Cammie Dunaway told IGN the game is likely to pass the 8 million mark when NPD’s next set of monthly figures is published.

All in all, this decade’s top five is entirely dominated by Rockstar North on PlayStation 2 and Nintendo on Wii: the number five slot is held by Mario Kart Wii, another still-consistent seller that’s creeping up on Vice City with 6.7 million units sold.

Source and written by: Gamasutra

Analyst Pachter predicts a price drop on the Wii and PS3.

Analyst Michael Pachter Often hits the worlds news site’s about price cuts that are coming or ones he finds necessary. Last week he was really upset about the high retail price of the PSP-go. He corrected his comment shortly after, so again it seems he was convinced it wasn’t that much after all.

Pacher now finds it necessary for Nintendo to lower the price of the Nintendo Wii to 199,- € this will result according to him that Nintendo will reach the sale goals for the Wii. Since this is just a prediction this doesn’t mean the price will drop or even will reach this price tag that Pachter has in mind.

Also the PS3 would be cheaper before the end of 2009 according to him. And it won’t be a small price cut either. This will also mean that the 360 will drop the price even more or will come with more bundled systems.

If Pachter is right about this all is still to be seen. More analysts have been wrong in the past and present. Developers also never react to these predictions and shortly before Pachter’s predictions Nintendo-president Satoru Iwata stated that even with the decreased sales of the Wii Nintendo will not fight it by lowering the price of the Wii but will fight it by releasing a stronger and better lineup of new software.

Sony’s Jack Tretton says me can’t remember the day that people dint call for a price cut for the PS3. “Every one, but ourselves would love to see a free PS3″ In the meanwhile Sony tries to keep the prices as relevant as possible. And cheap doesn’t always mean successful. What matters is the amount of profit you get out of it, Tretton says.