Topic: Nintendo Increases Wii Development, Confident in Third Party Performance

[Kairon]

Nintendo is also considering increasing production for both Wii hardware and software, and sets a date, sort of, for the Western release of million-seller Wii Fit.
 http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=15185

 Nintendo recently held a press conference in Tokyo to go over their recent third quarter financial results, and during the Q&A session they fielded questions about the company's future plans regarding their successful Nintendo Wii and DS gaming systems.    

Nintendo said that while their internal development resources had not changed drastically, they were ramping up Wii development and decreasing DS development. Answering a follow-up question on the performance of third party software on the Wii, Nintendo felt confident that the situation on the Wii would improve just as it did with the Nintendo DS.    

They pointed out that while 11 out of 14 million-selling titles for the Wii were from Nintendo themselves, this was not dissimilar to the situation of the DS early in its life. Nintendo pointed out that currently only 28 of the 50 million-selling titles for the DS are first party, so they believe that the ratio of successful first party to third party software will get better as time goes on.    

When asked about continued production of the perennially sold-out Wii hardware, Nintendo stated that they were continuing at full production of 1.8 million units a month. They also admitted to a temporary production delay last year in manufacturing Wii software. Nintendo was examining the possibility of increasing production of both Wii software and hardware.    

Finally, Nintendo provided a rough target for the release of Wii Fit in the west. The fitness-themed title has been a big hit in Japan, and has already sold more than a million copies in its home market. For America and Europe, Nintendo is thinking of releasing Wii Fit anywhere from April to June of this year.

[Kairon]

I hope that Nintendo doesn't experience any more software production hiccups. That would be a great strain on their third party relations because third parties need to get their games out for the hit system to have any chance of it... I heard some people suggest that last holiday season Wii lead times were getting longer, so that may be the temporary hiccup that Nintendo experience.

I know that Nintendo has previously stated a goal of selling 300 million copies of software between the Wii and DS yearly, (was it yearly?) so definitely they need to make sure their software production capability is up... and that they don't run out of plastic, like they did briefly for the DS game cases in europe I think.

[Plugabugz]

Quote
They also admitted to a temporary production delay last year in manufacturing Wii software.

This is the direct reason why Mario/Sonic and Mario Galaxy were, at release, super hard to find. The latter wound up being priced for £50 ($100) in places.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Well the truth is most copies of Galaxy and M/S ended up in California.  Sorry, PAL territories.

[Kairon]

I wonder what games Nintendo are counting... I think they're only talking about million selling games that appear somewhere on their 3rd quarter financial reports...