Nintendo Admits Selling People on the NX Could be Difficult

Nintendo has confessed that it may be difficult to sell the concept of its forthcoming NX console – projected for release in March 2017 – to consumers, and is cautious to ensure it doesn’t suffer the same ill fate as the Wii U.

During a shareholders meeting, Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima admitted that, while confident that the NX will make up the shortfall in sales it suffered during the lifespan of the Wii U, it can’t be complacent when communicating the NX’s selling points to gamers, with Shigeru Miyamoto adding that the NX faces similar launch challenges to the Wii U.

“In an internal sales representative meeting, someone projected that we would sell close to 100 million Wii U systems worldwide,” Kimishima said (translation courtesy of Polygon). “The thinking was that because Wii sold well, Wii U would follow suit. I said that, since the Wii had already sold so well, we need to clearly explain the attraction of the Wii U if we are to get beyond that and sell the new system, and that this would be no easy task.”

“I do think Wii U continues to be attractive as a media device that changes life in the living room,” Miyamoto added, “[and a] similar challenge continues with NX.”

Nintendo hopes that strong launch titles – including The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – will give the NX an advantage that the Wii U didn’t have.

“There will be big hits somewhere in our business, and they support the games that fail and allow us to take on other challenges,” Miyamoto said. “So our basic premise is to create software that will sell in the range of at least two million units. We simply couldn’t recoup our costs if we only released games in Japan that had sales of around 300,000 units, so the global market is our standard.”

“While we announced our shipment forecast of 800,000 Wii U hardware, we are forecasting total sales of ¥500 billion for this fiscal year, about the same as last year,” Kimishima said. “I am not currently able to talk about concrete figures for unit sales, but we are planning for NX to make up for falling Wii U sales. Software for NX will also contribute to sales and profit.”