Nintendo plans Wii Sports Resort for June
CEO Satoru Iwata addresses price cuts and more in Foreign Correspondents' Club talk.
Reuters reports that Nintendo's Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto, speaking at the Foreign Correspondents' Club, made mention today of a June release time frame for Wii Sports Resort. The two also discussed a variety of issues for the firm concerning both the domestic and international markets.
Wii Sports Resort is a sequel to the Wii Sports launch title that has sold over 40 million units worldwide (the game is bundled with the console in territories outside of Japan). Resort debuted at last year's E3 as a showpiece title for the Wii's upcoming Wii Motion Plus controller upgrade.
The June release is for Japan. Overseas, the game will be released in July.
Outside of the surprise release information, the talk session covered a variety of fiscal issues for the company. "Nintendo has not seen much influence from the change in the world's economic environment," said Iwata.
Despite the economic downturn, Nintendo posted record operating profit of 530 billion yen for the fiscal year, according to the Reuters report.
As a reason for this success, Iwata noted of the company's game systems that "There are many customers who put them number one on their most wanted lists."
The Wii may be having some trouble in the Japanese market, however, with recent Enterbrain stats putting PS3 above it by a large margin over the March period.
"It's true that the Wii is unhealthy in Japan," said Iwata. "The software lineup at the end of the year was not to expectations."
Relief may be on the way, however, with Iwata adding, "After June's release of Wii Sports Resort, we will be releasing a variety of games, and revitalize things again."
One tactic Nintendo will apparently not use to spur Wii sales is a price cut. "I don't feel it would be an effective method right now," said Iwata.
"If our products are not much different from competitors'," he explained, "price cuts would generate significant fresh demand. But video games are just not that kind of product."
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