Wii Are on the Way to Dethroning the PS2
According to Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata, sales of Nintendo’s innovative Wii video game console has the potential to surpass the Sony’s PS2, which is still the biggest hit in the history of the video game industry. In fact, Nintendo became one of the ten most expensive companies in Japan last month. As for Sony’s admirable moves of cutting its prices on the PS3 and introducing a thinner PSP, Iwata announced in an interview that Nintendo’s business would not be threatened significantly by such actions.
“‘Sony's PS2 sales of 100 million units is an extraordinary number that our home game console business has not achieved,’ Iwata said. ‘But if we can make our bid to expand the gaming population a continued success, we could exceed that.’”
“‘I wouldn't say there is no overlap between the group of customers Sony is targeting and the group of users that Nintendo is targeting. But that overlap is quite small,’ said Iwata, who is in Santa Monica, California, for the E3 game industry show.”
“‘I wouldn't say there is no overlap between the group of customers Sony is targeting and the group of users that Nintendo is targeting. But that overlap is quite small,’ said Iwata, who is in Santa Monica, California, for the E3 game industry show.”
In the past decade, Tokyo-based Sony Corp. has dominated the $30 billion global video game industry with the shipping of some 120 million PS2s. Although it is still much too early to say for sure, it seems that Nintendo is a good contender for the title, according to forecasts. Nintendo’s marketing strategy of appealing to a broader audience has proved to be extraordinarily successful, confirmed by excellent DS and Wii sales figures. Nintendo sold 5.8 million units of the Wii from launch to March 2007, and intends to sell another 14 million units by March 2008. Iwata also announced that the hardware portion of its Wii franchise has already become profitable, which is notable as it is not uncommon for video game companies to lose money on hardware while still making money from software.
