Nintendo: Wii U has “lost momentum” due to release schedule

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has said Wii U has “lost momentum” due to the company’s first-party release schedule.

“Wii U has lost momentum due to the release pace of first-party titles which has not lived up to consumers’ expectations,” said Iwata during Nintendo’s latest financial results briefing. “Starting with Pikmin 3 scheduled for release in the upcoming July, however, we will intensively launch our key titles to give sales momentum to the platform.

“As a decisive factor in buying a console is that you cannot play a much-anticipated title without the hardware, we will do our best to have you feel from this summer to the end of this year that there are plenty of great games for Wii U.”

Iwata promised to share more information about the company’s titles “for the rest of this year and early next year” at E3 in June.

The Nintendo boss also said communication has been an issue.

“We have not been able to solidly communicate the product value of Wii U to our consumers yet, which has been a grand challenge for us,” said Iwata.

“Some have the misunderstanding that Wii U is just Wii with a pad for games, and others even consider Wii U GamePad as a peripheral device connectable to Wii. We feel deeply responsible for not having tried hard enough to have consumers understand the product.”

According to Iwata, the system does not yet have its Wii Sports—a game in which people “immediately comprehended its product value.”

Iwata continued, “Wii U has lost momentum due to the release pace of first-party titles which has not lived up to consumers’ expectations. Starting with Pikmin 3 scheduled for release in the upcoming July, however, we will intensively launch our key titles to give sales momentum to the platform.”