Disappointing sales of a high profile Wii title, coupled with the recent drop in hardware sales has led to some Japanese analysts to speculate on whether the Nintendo bubble has finally burst.
Deca Sports might not have set the western world on fire, but it went over pretty well in Japan, selling 30,000 copies on its first day and 2 million copies overall. So when publisher HudsonSoft released the sequel they expected similar results and sent 50,000 copies to retailers. Total first day sales for ‘Deca Sporta 2’?
2,500 copies, a mere 3% of the total shipped, according to the reliable and respected sales blogger Sinobi.
While first day sales aren’t everything, it’s a pretty poor result for a game that HudsonSoft were so sure of, they hired a multi-platinum selling boy band to appear in the commercials. Add falling hardware sales into the mix and you have a recipe for disaster. Nintendo’s stock price fell by 7.5%, prompting Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata to state the Wii was “experiencing the most unhealthy condition since it hit the Japan market.”
After such a long time on top, this sudden shift in fortunes for Nintendo has led to the Japanese tech news site Impress Watch to speculate on the possibility of a crash in Nintendo’s future. The author, Hiroshige Goto, raises the question of what will happen if the slowdown that Nintendo is experiencing spreads to other markets and highlights the lack of compelling software for the Wii, especially in contrast to the high-profile releases coming for the PS3. If Impress Watch is correct, Nintendo had better announce something pretty special at E3
Source: 1up
