By Alex D'alessandro on June 19, 2014 at 8:27pm
If you haven’t bought a Wii U yet, Nintendo believes now is the time.
Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s marketing executive, believes that the Wii U is about to cross the threshold, leaving behind two years of lackluster sales. Speaking with GamesIndusty International, Moffitt discuses why some choice upcoming Nintendo titles are reason enough for their promising outlook:
As I look at what we have coming this holiday, now with "Mario Kart" and "Super Smash Bros," plus the innovation of Amiibo, I think we are right at that tipping point where we have a lot of great content that is about to be released for that platform that's going to tempt gamers into buying the system. Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America Marketing Executive
Does it only take one game to turn your faltering sales around? Nintendo believes so; case-in-point, Microsoft and Nintendo have both packaged their consoles with peripheral devices that were deemed necessary for the console at launch. Yet, with lackluster sales for both the Xbox One and the Wii U, both companies have gone back to the drawing boards to figure out what went wrong. In Microsoft's case, they dropped the bundled Kinect based on pricing concerns. Also known as latent demand, Microsoft knows that consumer desire will always be satiated by a lower price point. Oddly, Nintendo doesn’t share that view.
We think GamePad is the only innovation that's come in this new generation of consoles. So we have the only real point of difference. Certainly graphics are faster, graphics are better. This is not a real innovation for gamers. We are fully committed to leveraging the GamePad, to keeping it bundled with the system. Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America Marketing Executive
As Nintendo continues to buttress their GamePad around the idea of new and innovative gaming experiences, Nintendo is taking a risk by choosing to focus on their primary party games. Both Sony and Microsoft have made large concessions to the indie community of the last few years, even giving them ample showroom floor at E3. Nintendo has a more difficult choice to make, according to Moffitt.
With any show, you have choices to make. Every time I go down to our booth floor and see how many people are waiting to play "Super Smash Bros," when I look outside at the Best Buys... Last night we had four hours of game play on "Super Smash Bros," and we had 1,000 people in line. We had to turn people away. So it's a tough choice for us as a platform holder ... We talked to a lot of [third parties] before launching the Wii U, and we addressed some of the issues that really were holding some of them back from developing realistic content on our platform. At least for the indie community, we've become a lot easier to do business with, and we're seeing a steady flow of content now.Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America Marketing Executive
Does Nintendo have what it takes to once again reign supreme in the ever-thinning console caper? It really comes down to games that people want to play, support to play those games with ease when online or off, and a dedication to their customer that doesn’t resort to pandering.
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