Will sales plummet, but why?

If you hadn’t already noticed Wii sales have been on the slide in recent weeks and months – nowhere more so than in Japan, where first quarter sales have more than halved over the last 12 months. But why is this happening?

Quite simply it’s all down to the general dearth of top quality titles available for the console right now. And before you start accusing us of anti-Wii prejudice and quoting the runaway success of titles like Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit, we should point out that this is the sentiment of Nintendo’s own big boss, Satoru Iwata:

“Consistently, big time titles will be released in the marketplace for this hardware. When that stops, to reinvigorate the console, or to put it another way, I think the current decline in hardware sales is due to the fact that there aren’t many big titles (at the moment).” he tells Nintendo investors in a recent report.

But is Mr. Iwata right on this point or is there a deeper-seated problem relating to the hardware itself that he’s refusing to acknowledge? All current consoles have their fair share of uninspiring or outright stinky software titles – the DS being more blighted than most in that regard – but none is in quite the same sorry state as the Wii. Could it be instead that the Wii simply lacks the appealing pocketability of its diminutive stablemate or the raw processing power of its next-gen rivals, and that such chickens are finally coming home to roost?

It might also be that the Japanese gaming public has suddenly fallen out of love with the Wii’s quirky interface too, or that pretty much everyone who wants a Wii has finally got one – you can’t go on selling untold millions of consoles forever, after all. And then the good old Credit Crunch might be playing its part too.

We don’t have the answers, just a few half-formed theories. In any case we’re interested to hear your opinions – what do you think lies at the heart of the Wii’s unexpected decline? Will a few more AAA games save it or make you buy one? Would a price cut work? Iwata doesn’t think that’s the issue, although he need only look at the massive success of the sub £100 PS2 to see the possibilities there.

Anyway, let’s hear your reckonings. Informed, heavily partisan or otherwise...