Nintendo Okie

Didn’t we just talk about this guy?  A report from Gamasutra today talks about John Riccitiello’s reaction to the declining Wii Sales.  Nintendo recently announced that they sold 550,000 Wii units during the week of Black Friday.  That number is down 31.3% from last year’s 715,000 units.  During the conversation Mr. Riccitiello had the following to say:

“I think there’s no doubt that [Nintendo] enjoyed spectacular success a year ago and it’s been softer since then…  [The Wii is] clearly not going to sell as many units this year as it did last year,” he says, adding that EA looks at marketshare as an important metric: “We have a low-20 [percent] share on the Xbox 360, a high 20 [percent] share on the PS3, and a 19-20 [percent] share on the Wii.”

EA is the second biggest publisher on the Wii behind Nintendo themselves and have had some of the better games from third parties on the system such as Medal of Honor Heroes 2, Boom Blox and the MySims franchise.  He went on to say during that talk that when one platform’s sales go down another usually goes up and they still make money. 

“I’m not like Activision, without a Wii business, or like Ubisoft with a heavy focus on the [Nintendo] platforms. It’s not that important.”

He credits their success on each of the platforms to the fact that they support each platform with unique software that benefits the console’s users. 

Source: Gamasutra