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Strong support from third-party publishers for the Wii U launch means Nintendo has been able to hold off from releasing all its titles close to the console’s launch, president and CEO Saturu Iwata has told investors.
“If you look at how pre-orders are doing at the moment, it is not an exaggeration to say that Wii U is sure to sell well in this holiday season, as many of you are probably thinking,” explained Iwata. “But we realise the biggest challenge is to make sure that Wii U sells well even in the next year after the holiday season, and we are working on that too.
“Nintendo tends to release too many titles at the launch of a hardware system and as a result suffers a drop in new games for quite some time after launch, and for the Wii U launch, we are being very careful not to let it happen.
“Fortunately, third-party publishers overseas are launching many titles for us this time, and we were able to push back the release of some of the titles that we had originally intended to release as launch titles until next year.”
Iwata believes that new software post launch, together with strong word of mouth, will help ensure Wii U momentum continues past January 2013.
Wii U launches in the UK on November 30.
This surely explains Pikmin’s absence from the launch, which is now set to arrive in Q1 2013. Tecmo Koei’s Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge – distributed in Europe by Nintendo – will release on January 11.
