Nintendo anticipates over 50% of the U.S. market share
- May 29, 2007 14:37 PM PST
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In a recent interview, Nintendo's George Harrison revealed a scenario in which the Wii would be able to take a majority share in the current battle for next-gen console supremacy.
By Eugene Huang
George Harrison, Nintendo's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communication, took time out of his hectic schedule at Nintendo Media Summit 2007 to answer questions from Wired's Game|Life blog. One of the more noteworthy questions asked where he believed the Wii would be in the next five years, to which Harrison responded:
"We also have a belief that we can be, of this lifecycle, 40-45% of the hardware that's being sold. And that would be a phenomenal increase for us over the GameCube era. But on the other hand, we could get over 50%."
Harrison notes, however, that obtaining a majority of the market share would be determined by the actions of Nintendo's immediate competitors, Sony and Microsoft. It is his belief that both companies need to shift their focus away from "the Grand Theft Autos and the Halos", since they're already behind in terms of appealing to the casual market.
Still, Harrison also points out that their attempts to tap into these markets have so far failed.
"For last year's E3, at the last minute, Sony rushed out their Sixaxis controller as an effort to respond to the Wii remote," he states. "We saw Microsoft roll out Viva Pinata as their killer app for the Pokemon set. And neither of those worked really well."
Of course, Nintendo's true success won't play out until it resolves its current issues with its supply chain. Harrison proclaims that the supply situation is "improving", but there's still a long way to go.
"[I]t's still shocking to us that we've gone from being out of stock after one day a week, to now we're out of stock after three days a week," Harrison comments. "It's not clear yet when we'll be in stock on a regular basis every day of the week; all we can do is slowly increase production and find out.
